City Officials: The Only Reason For Stemmons Evacuation Was ‘Roaming Employees’
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Lest we be accused of burying the lead, nobody got fired (yet) and an audit of what exactly went down at the City of Dallas’ Development Services Department’s new office building is imminent.
Dallas City Council members convened Thursday as the Ad Hoc Committee on General Investigating and Ethics to discuss the building at 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway, which DSD employees recently inhabited then vacated four months later. Following a three-hour meeting, the panel’s chair, Cara Mendelsohn, agreed to meet with Interim City Manager Kim Tolbert on Monday to discuss the matter further.
The news about the DSD building on Stemmons Freeway — the permit office that didn’t have permits and was plagued with fire code violations — keeps getting worse.
“This purchase [of the Stemmons building] and subsequent activities are of importance to the taxpayers and business community, and the tragic irony of a permit office not being able to open because it failed inspections and [did not secure] a certificate of occupancy is lost on no one,” Mendelsohn said.
Builders who frequently work with DSD staff were shocked to hear that 70 employees who occupied the 11-story Stemmons building vacated the premises in early April and moved back to the Oak Cliff Municipal Center. The city reportedly spent $21 million to purchase and renovate the Stemmons building.
Again, the public was shocked to read in this April 26 memorandum from Assistant City Manager Robert Perez that city officials were not required to advise staff that the building wasn’t up to code. Almost 40 fire code violations were cited in early April.
Who’s to Blame For The Stemmons Building Debacle?
The Perez memo, a response to questions raised by District 2 Councilman Jesse Moreno, explains that some employees were accessing floors of the tower that they were not allowed to access.
Assistant City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry and Development Services Director Andrew Espinoza accepted responsibility at Thursday’s meeting for moving employees into the building but explained that the fifth floor — where employees were assigned to work — was code-compliant.
The problem, Al-Ghafry said, and the sole reason employees were returned to OCMC, was that they were “roaming” throughout the building and working on floors of the building that were not code-compliant.
“That’s the only reason,” he said.
Al-Ghafry said a project manager should have been implemented and communication should have been better. Committee members repeatedly thanked Espinoza, Al-Ghafry, and other city staff members for being honest and taking accountability.
The ad hoc committee voted Thursday to ask the city’s internal auditor to conduct an investigation of the City’s due diligence process for the purchase of the building and subsequent improvements, inspections, and permitting activities completed before the decision to start moving employees into the building, including comparing the practices observed to industry practices.
“A regular audit is not a ‘gotcha.’ It’s a ‘let me define a scope, let me go in and verify it.’ Very often, they are categorizing by risk and they are making management recommendations,” Mendelsohn said. “And then the manager’s office will accept or not and respond. I think there are some negotiations that happen.”
Discussion at Ethics Committee Meeting
The Ad Hoc Committee on General Investigating and Ethics is chaired by Mendelsohn and its members include Zarin Gracey, Mayor Eric Johnson, Jaynie Schultz, and Kathy Stewart. Unlike other council committees, the panel meets infrequently. It usually takes a situation such as the Stemmons building matter to assemble the committee. However, several council members who are not on the committee attended Thursday’s meeting.
The Thursday briefing covered the timeline, costs, and responsibilities associated with acquisition and occupancy at the Stemmons building.
Perez told The Dallas Morning News that a fire inspector reported on April 3 that a fire alarm could only be heard on the second floor, so the building was placed on “fire watch,” a temporary measure to monitor a building or portion of a building to identify and control fire hazards, detect fire, raise a fire alarm, and notify the fire department.
“We did not tell staff because when we were made aware of the noncompliance issues we implemented a fire watch, which is a consistent practice across the private sector or private buildings while fire alarm non-compliance items are addressed,” Perez said in an April 30 news report.
Perez’s memo further states that there were no negative impacts on the permitting process or performance caused by the move to the Stemmons location and subsequent move back to OCMC.
“The teams that transitioned between 7800 N. Stemmons and OCMC were inspections, fiscal, and other non-front-facing teams,” the memo states.
According to the Dallas Morning News report, employees were told in a March 27 email to not go to floors that hadn’t been cleared for occupancy. Only the building’s fifth floor had received a certificate of occupancy, and it was a temporary one. Inspections for the whole building are pending.
Al-Ghafry pointed out during Thursday’s meeting that there were “no life and safety issues.”
Next Steps And Estimated TImelines
The City Council heard from Bond and Construction Management Director Jenny Nicewander at a City Council briefing on Wednesday that $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds is slated for the Stemmons building. About $2.7 million is slated for information technology infrastructure, $1 million for elevator modernization, and $300,000 for fire inspection and electrical upgrades. The remainder would go toward furniture and fixtures.
Additionally, 2017 bond funds are slated for the project. About $2 million more is needed to complete necessary upgrades.
Officials estimated Thursday that at least 75 percent of critical remediation tasks can be completed this summer and employees should be able to return to the Stemmons building in the fall.
Members of the ad hoc committee agreed to meet again after staff fleshes out the timeline and responds to questions raised at Thursday’s meeting.
Councilman Gracey said it’s embarrassing that the city staff responsible for building inspections found themselves in this situation.
“As we move forward with these processes, the communication, externally and internally, we have to tighten up on that,” Gracey said. “Again, we’re making decisions, and again, it’s for one department, but it’s going to impact potentially budgets and all these people, so we just have to tighten up on that communication piece.”
Councilwoman Gay Donnell Willis expressed what many seemed to be thinking.
“This is a big disappointment,” she said.
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Out of curiosity, why were employees not listening and going to floors that weren’t cleared for occupancy? Why weren’t they restricted access also? I’ve worked in the construction and engineering community for over 25 years, albeit in another part of Texas, but everything sounds like standard practices. Every office building has periods of construction where parts are being remodeled and other parts are occupied. Or do y’all think we make everyone vacate a building every time a tenant changes out? Sounds like a whole lot of fuss over nothing in my opinion.
Eddie, it’s the city of Dallas, they can’t really do much of anything right!
it is funny they blame us, but they were not willing to tell us about the life safety issues this building has had for years!