A contract between Lafayette Consolidated Government and a Youngsville engineering firm hired by former Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory to work on the Homewood Drive and Coulee Ile Des Cannes detention pond projects has been terminated by Mayor-President Monique Boulet for breach of contract, our media partners at The Acadiana Advocate report.
Lafayette City-Parish Attorney Pat Ottinger on Jan. 30 sent a notice of default to McBade Engineers & Consultants of Youngsville alleging the company failed to live up to the terms of the Homewood contract dated May 12, 2021, and amended on Dec. 30, 2021, to add the Ile Des Cannes project near Scott, the Acadiana Advocate reports.
The projects fall under the umbrella of LCG's approximately $80 million Bayou Vermilion Flood Control project, which includes a controverial Guillory administration project that removed a spoil bank in St. Martin Parish, without first obtaining permits or the neighboring parish's permission, the Acadiana Advocate reports.
On Wednesday, Ottinger sent McBade a notice that LCG is terminating the contract for cause. We reached out to the firm, and they declined comment.
We obtained a copy of the letter from Ottinger. In it, he says the contract is terminated and all work on the project by McBade must cease immediately; he also notes that the firm ahs said they will cooperate with LCG's decision to stop, and asks them to turn over their files on the projects.
In the letter, Ottinger tells the firm that LCG is terminating the contract for cause. He notes that LCG sent a default letter to the firm back in January, citing "numerous material breaches of the contract" and gave them a deadline to "cure" these problems.
"....McBade failed to timely cure all of its material breaches of the contract and LCG is therefore terminating the contract for cause," Ottinger writes.
LCG remains committed to the projects and completing them, Ottinger adds, but "McBade's ongoing breaches of the contract, repeated failure to address the projects' needs and lack of communication with LCG have hindered progress and jeopardized their success," Ottinger writes.
Ottinger notes that McBade disputes that it is in breach and wrote a letter in response to the January communication, but LCG "strongly disagrees" with that position.
One of the main problems Ottinger lists is McBade's alleged failure to facilitate permit applications for either of them, "leaving that critical task to a new adminsitration long after the majority of the work was complete."
Ottinger writes that the firm also did not make sure the project designs could be completed within the budget, leading to "the current state, where the Louisiana Office of Facility Planning and Control is withholding over $20 million in reimbursements to LCG because the Homewood Project is not functional and there are insufficient allocated funds to complete the Projects in accordance with your designs."
McBade fails to take cost constraints seriously, and failed to respond to LCG requests for documentation needed for the process of retroactively securing permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Ottinger adds. Although various LCG officials requested the documentation via email, McBade hasn't even responded, he said.
