$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[Rome Dodson]

another great money making idea!!! when the gazibo is finished we put in a STARBUCKS, don't forget they now sell beer and wine !! rome

[OP]

let's have greblo start a water park

[Busto]

We have no money. We are in debt. We bought a tractor, spent a bunch in the wash and spent the remaining $100,000.00 on a pedestal.

[OP]

Hey, you gotta spend money to make money; break a few eggs to make an omelet.

The only way I see us getting back in the black... more gazebos.

also:

World's largest indoor gazebo:
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/photo-to ... &imageID=3

[Busto]

Really, we've lost members.

The gazebo was built on fallacies, not fact.

It will be $40,000.00...Really?

Tom Mentioned that he felt it was overbuilt, but Joe explained that because of the earthquake problem (potential for earth liquefaction) and the high Santa Ana winds, this is what was required...Really?

We need a gazebo to keep our land...Really?

Yep, If we don't build one, we loose validity...Really?

We will loose our land to the golf course after they loose land to the college...Really?

The permit is the reason we had to move so quickly...Really?

If someone wants to make an omelet, go right ahead, but don't waist the eggs.

If you want to make a gazebo to make money, go ahead, but do it on facts.

I tell you what lets have a kegger in the LZ...I'll buy. Lets hear what they have to say in the LZ over a cold one. Then we all will know the facts.

I can tell you that they are not facts and cost us a bunch of unnecessary eggs.

[Busto]

If you get the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don’t get all the facts, it can’t be right.
-Bernard Baruch

I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
-Jack Benny

I was converted from fool when my spine was somewhat reorganized.
-Russell Baker

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.
-Dick Gregory

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
-Sir Winston Churchill

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.
-Mel Brooks

“I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at night�.
-Warren G Harding

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.
-Ellen DeGeneres

A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name.
-Evan Esar

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
-Sir Winston Churchill

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
-Groucho Marx

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
-Mark Twain

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
-George Carlin

Millions watched the apple fall, but Newton was the only one who asked why.
-Bernard Baruch

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.
-Joan Rivers

A crowd always thinks with its sympathy, never with its reason.
-William R Alger

I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something.
-Mitch Hedberg

A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement.
-Anna Quindlen

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
-Groucho Marx

[Busto]

One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse - into the dustbin where it belongs.
~George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," Shooting an Elephant, 1950

[Jim]

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)

[phkao]

Sometimes it is better to speak the truth to remove the doubt than sit there silently being treated like a fool.

I did not get involved until after the fact, so I was a fool!

[skygeek AKA Seabass]

Busto you have all ready voiced your concerns several times to many members and the members moving this project forward everyday. Things have changed because of you. Thank you. But I don't understand why you continue, we cant change the past, let me repeat no one can change the past. This project will continue and will be finished soon and will be amazing, in 5, 10, 15 years I will remember the the ones who made it possible, not the people who wanted to make it difficult. Don't be that dude. There are members who have put in 100's of hours of hard labor and there own personal money who deserve recognition and appreciation focus your efforts on that, be that dude.

[Rome Dodson]

busto, don't cry over spilt milk! or water under the bridge. oboma

[Busto]

I'd like to clarify that I am not trying to stop the project. I have problems with the project management all the way to the foundation work. Those who worked on the gazebo will get their recognition. At the last board meeting, I spoke on behalf of George before they voted on a lifetime membership because I think he deserves it. I also believe a few other names should be added into the discussion. I've never said anything bad about those who have worked on the gazebo project. So why are you going in that direction. I spent time helping Raffi, I did rebar, dug in the trenches. Are you comparing member contribution? Do you have a standard on hours? Is more hours a standard, which allows us to speak, concerning the gazebo? I believe being a member does that. When it comes to the gazebo, no one should have to feel they are obligated to work on it. The money we paid the contractor was more then enough for his company to finish the job without volunteers from the club.

The SHGA members did eighty percent if not more of the prep work for the contractor and one hundred percent clean up. Does anyone know the contract? If you did, you'd realize that for the split between the material/labor, there was no reason why we had to do anything. The material/labor cost was more than reasonable to keep the SHGA members off the job site. The members should know the facts of why they were expected to do so much work. It was expected…it was in the contract. They just used the word “Volunteers�.

I believe there isn't a Board member or SHGA member who would have handled their personal finances the same way. So why did they expect us to? What pushed them to agree on a contract that is anything but reasonable? Come on…We have plenty of members that could have looked at the contract, and after going over it, make a reasonable decision that it was unacceptable. Do you think it was reasonable? Don’t you think the members should know the facts?

Tom mentioned that he felt it was overbuilt, but Joe explained that because of the earthquake problem (potential for earth liquefaction) and the high Santa Ana winds, this is what was required...This is a gleaming fallacy at best. (We didn’t need a soil report). This statement was analyzed and understood before it was said to Tom. I have no problem talking with anyone about the facts on this. There have been a few twists presented to try to convince otherwise, but it’s pretty straight forward concerning the facts. Do you think the members understand the facts? No … they’ve been told to move on, nothing we can do now, why bring it up? I’m a paid member and that’s why. Follow the crowd … no way. You go right ahead.

We need a gazebo to keep our land...(We own our land and have since 1996).

Yep, if we don't build one, we lose validity...(Any structure would have the same validity as the gazebo. I’m not trying to put down the gazebo. I’m pointing out another fallacy that had people thinking the way they did. (Again, we own our land since 1996).

We will lose our land to the golf course after they lose land to the college...(Same as the above)

The permit is the reason we had to move so quickly. The permit had nothing to do in preventing us from getting other bids. If I’m wrong, please explain.

I'm sorry, but these reasons do not make sense, along with all the others I haven't mentioned, but will in the final report. The board was given a diet of the same desperate fallacies. I’m convinced it was a contributor in their haste decisions concerning the contract for the foundation, it is the only reason I can imagine the board voted 7-2-1.

What we do not have is a CUP that would allow us to use our land as a hang glider site. This would have given us validity for that reason and for that reason alone, but since 1996 we have owned our land and that is all the validity we need to keep our land.

Pi-Hsuan and I have been working on a report I thought would take a month. Yet almost eight months later we are still getting the facts.

Concerning the gazebo, we are not forging a new frontier; we made a gazebo. If you look all around you there are plenty of people who have done it before us. We have gone from a $40,000.00 dollar dream to a $100,000.00 plus, as OP put it, Omelet. So why are we so far off? Why didn’t we stop and rethink? Andy Beem asked this question at a board meeting. Joe said, “We have to keep moving forward, $50,000.00-$60,000.00 is not out of the question.� Andy was more than reasonable to scrap and rethink. So why did Joe say we need to keep moving forward? Why didn’t any of the board members challenge Joe’s words?

It was also mentioned that it’s not a lot of money from one person, it's a little money from a lot of people. This points out a frame of mind, but it isn’t logical. $100,000.00 plus is a lot of money no matter how you look at it.

At this point it’s all about morals. What was the truth and what wasn’t? What effects did all the fallacies have on the overall process? What can we do to prevent this sort of situation in the future?

[dhmartens]

We could have paid an auditor to manage the projects costs but $140,000 for a good one would have driven the price up to over $210,000. a cost overrun was cheaper.

I was testing the hypothesis that another launch could help increase membership. The God Awful prospect of the strip miners dumping waste rock up on top of the doughnut might create a high enough launch to launch the back side and swing around to the front while you still have enough altitude. Maybe create a man made venturi funnel to help propel the glider upward and over. I'd better stop now.

[Busto]

I'll take chocolate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwixq7ff ... re=related

[dhmartens]

Its almost humorous that you're both willing to volunteer all this substantial time and effort "after the fact" when it would have been appreciated during the construction. The effort back then could have saved the club tens of thousands of dollars, today, it can only save the club on any future projects but we are seeing a lot of donations and volunteerism now. I wasn't following the crowd, I was following the Leadership of democratically elected Joesph Vandetol. We didn't follow a crowd, the crowd elected a leader to pursue the will of the crowd. Democracy.

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Sir Winston Churchill"

I saw numerous quotes but perhaps it should be put to the rhetorical and make it more difficult to argue for some.

Don't Look Back While Plowing
"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the service in the kingdom of God." Luke 9:62

For more detailed information and interpretations:
http://www.fbbc.com/messages/farm_plow.htm

http://godsgrowinggarden.blogspot.com/2 ... owing.html

http://www.kencollins.com/bible/bible-d2.htm

Although it might not be a bad idea to look back and check to see whos following you into the staging area.

[phkao]

What is humorous is your lack of knowledge on the real issue of the topic. We have been aware of the Gazebo project since 2000. If you go back and look at the information given to the club, during the competition, $40K is what we were told. By the time the permit was approved it was $50K… still it raised no alarm. It wasn’t until sitting at the LZ talking to Joe and he mentioned to lend the club $20K with a low interest did it finally start coming to light that we were not told the truth.

The board obtained several cost estimates, not bids, from friends of the club before the project went into the construction. It is hard to determine exactly what those cost estimates covered when you read through the meeting minutes, materials only or with labors, entire project or just the foundation. Have you gone through those?

Let’s say the materials for the entire project cost about $50K (earlier we were told $30K to $40K), and it is a very conservative estimate. (Based on the answer Ken Andrews posted on 9/12/2011 in regards to TomS’ “Some questions about the pavilion project�, the materials cost $25.4K after the foundation and steel work.) It is reasonable to think that the entire construction would cost about $112K (45% materials to 55% labor and profit in the recent climate), or let’s round it up to $120K. With a proper competitive bidding process, we might be able to get the project done even cheaper and most importantly, all the work would be performed by the contractor without a single volunteer from the club.

We paid total of $63313.59 to Nootenboom Construction Company and $42.0K was spent on labor, according to Ken. What is the percentage of materials to labor and profit? 33% to 67%. This profit margin is way above the industry average in this climate. In the “Contract�, Site Grading, Site Layout, Site Trenching for Footings, Backfill Dirt and Compact, Exhaust Backfill at the Storage Area, and the Final Clean-up and Removal were explicitly written as SHGA’s responsibilities. On top of that, numerous SHGA Volunteers were also specified in the “Contract� for the rest of the tasks. Wait until you see the fine prints at the end of “Contract� requesting all kind of favors from the club and Windsports.

An auditor will not solve our problem and it wouldn’t do us any good. Our purpose of brining up the issue is to bring the awareness to the club members and hope to educate them not to make the same mistake in the future. In the next four, five months we will be addressing subjects pertaining to the Gazebo project, one by one, in the Board Meeting. We hope the members who care about the interest of the club will come and listen.

I challenge you to come to a board meeting and learn something of value. To talk to the club about an auditor and throw information out there that is meaningless doesn’t help anything.

Again, to prevent any chance of something like this happening to the club in the future, it is important to understand the past … no matter how offensive people feel. I am offended that we were told one thing only to find out much too late that we screwed up. Every bit of this was preventable.

[phkao]

I don’t mind that you found it humorous that Robert and I have spent last eight months researching and writing a report concerning the Gazebo project. Rob and the rest of the Board approved this task at the Board Meeting in July 2011.

Recently, I let Rob know that we were ready to start presenting the report, which has been broken up into four topics:

o Land Use, Conditional Use Permit (CUP) and Building Permit
o Design Competition and Project Development
o Cost Estimate and Bidding
o Building Contract

Starting next month, I will be presenting one subject at a time, starting with Building Contract and working my way back to the top. It will be the first item in the meeting agenda. If you are interested in the topic and really want to know the facts, come to the next four Board Meetings.

[dhmartens]

I find the report so far very professional and interesting. I only found it humorous as compared to projects I have worked on in the past. Its noble to volunteer your time for the project. But if I were paying for the audit I would expect a cost benefit analysis. Who would benefit from the information gained from analyzing this one time project? possibly other hang gliding clubs thinking of building structures. Future SHGA projects for certain.

When Rockwell bought Baker Perkins PMC all they did was install $7 million printing presses with seasoned project managers and a $10,000 penalty paid to the customer for each day it wasn't finished by the contracted completion date. A very tightly run operation.


The biggest item in your report is the amount paid to Nootenboom Construction. If that contract were bid to the lowest residential construction bidder we may have seen some "material" cost savings.
Were there any benefits from over building the foundation and using a military grade contractor with experience in radar penetration and bunker busting durability in aircraft hangers and bunkers? Only time will tell. I do know I've seen residential concrete walls cracking and in disrepair all over the place and had a friend that almost bought a house with a cracked foundation. If we used a cheap contractor and the foundation cracked and he bankrupted his old and formed a new company would we have any recourse other than start over? Do we have extra piece of mind having used Nootenboom?

[phkao]

I do this for living; therefore, I can’t take this lightly. I found out that if a person is not in the construction field, what I think is a red-flag might look just fine and what I think is a commonsense might be Greek to him. It doesn’t matter how smart this person is and how respectful this person is in his own field. That is why I am doing this report for the club.

“Who would benefit from the information gained from analyzing this one time project?�

You answered your own question well in two posts:

“…today, it can only save the club on any future projects but we are seeing a lot of donations and volunteerism now.�

“Possibly other hang gliding clubs thinking of building structures. Future SHGA projects for certain.�

This is exactly what I’d like to achieve, to benefit for our future projects. Hopefully, in the process, I can also help to bring unity back to the club. I know a few members who left the club because of the frustration the Gazebo project brought. At the same time, thanks to all the members who chipped in their skills, labors and most of all, valuable time, to complete the project.

[Glenn]

If mistakes were made, identify them and try to quantify them as compared to the alternative. If that analysis informs us that there were better ways to have gone, we will know on the next project. But mistakes are not always purposeful, nor even preventable on a first time project.

I think the most important thing to remember is that the club is run by hardworking unpaid volunteers. If all they cared about was avoiding mistakes they would never get involved and nothing would get done. The people who made this happen, took the risks of ridicule, attack, and criticism, and did it the best they could, because they wanted things better, and nobody else stepped up to do it.

I'm all for learning from mistakes. I just hope the lesson doesn't become: Never volunteer to help the club or you will be sorry unless you do it perfect, and by perfect I mean according to everyone simultaneously.

My guess is that most people in the club think we spent too much, and there is not much argument there. But, I believe that nobody presented sufficiently better alternatives AT THE RIGHT TIME to prevent that. So the people who were trying to make things happen, as they were elected to do, did the best they could with the level of member involvement and help they had at their disposal.

I don't know all the details, as I was not around at the time, but from what I've heard and seen, it appears that the main reason we spent so much money was to make up for the lack of member involvement, help and expertise. If your task is to get something done, you got volunteers, slaves or money. It sounds like we only had one at our disposal in sufficient quantity to move ahead. So it got used, and the job got done.

In the end, it will be a phenomenal place, and if criticism is acceptable, as it should be, then so should be respect, gratitude and acknowledgement for those who didn't shrink from the challenge and stepped up. I wasn't around much then, but I'm glad someone was.

I welcome the report, and hope we have the wisdom to use the information wisely and with respect. We are trying to have a good time here with the little time we have left. We joined this club for enjoyment, let's not miss the whole point.