Editor’s Note: This post was submitted to us by an anonymous source who calls himself “Honest Government.”
After much speculation as to what in the world is Tom Daly doing with the building at 433 Civic Center Drive, we can now tell you that Tom Daly has built a “Records Center” at the money eating building he bought almost four years ago. From what we can tell it might be a move to have something to show for more than 10 years at the helm of a lack luster career as Clerk-Recorder. But the real kicker is that he has built his crowning achievement with no Board approval and apparently no actual contracts. The vendors have been paid and now the department is busy retroactively creating contacts to make this look all legitimate possibly before going to the Board for approval.
Since Daly has no original ideas, it appears that he took a play out of the good old boy’s remodeling play book. A play that got several O.C. Public Works officials in hot water. Daly has disregarded County policy in the past and can’t claim ignorance—read about it here.
The real question is how much is this costing the tax payers and is the Orange County Board of Supervisor’s monitoring the situation here? Also who owns this building? The County or Daly? If it took Board approval to buy the building, shouldn’t it take Board approval to move on any projects and or construction that is going on at the building? According to a report by the O.C. Public Works it was going to take $5.6 million to remodel this building to make it usable for storage of archives materials. This prompted calls from the Board for the now embattled and non-credible CEO Tom Mauk to make sure this was a good buy. At the end of the day Mauk said that the building was an asset for the county. Read the full memo here.
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