Tribune Editorial: Gilbert officials must face music on Big League costs

Another controversy surrounding Gilbert’s Big League Dreams amateur ballpark again has town officials insisting they’ve done nothing wrong and Mayor Steve Berman verbally attacking a broadcast news reporter for asking some reasonable and important questions.

We think it’s time for Gilbert officials to stop blaming everyone else and to start taking responsibility for a suspect bidding process that resulted in a $40 million project, 77 percent more than taxpayers were originally told.

To understand this issue, let us make clear that this project involved both a California-based company called Big League Dreams which operates the ball field complex in Elliot District Park, and an independent construction contractor which actually built the eight miniature stadiums and other facilities that opened in January.

Last weekend, KNXV-TV (Channel 15) reported the Big League Dreams company also happened to be the only outside consultant that Gilbert used to come up with the original plans for a recreational sports complex. That connection alone would be at least somewhat suspicious when the management contract was to be awarded after a direct competition between various bidders.

Channel 15 went on to note that Gilbert town codes and state law forbids any consultant that helps to write the standards to judge a project’s bids, formally known as requests for proposal, from actually placing its own bid to win the project. Town Manager George Pettit told the Tribune that the Big League Dreams company advised Gilbert on what type of complex to pursue, but had no direct involvement in crafting the requests for proposal and had no inside advantage over the other two bidders.

Even if there was no legal violation, we have to question if Big League Dreams had an undue influence over this entire process. Normally a fiscally conservative government, Gilbert decided to pay for all of the construction, including a series of additions that raised the final cost by more than $9 million.

As a result, Big League Dreams had no economic incentive to make sure its original estimates were accurate, and didn’t pay anything out of its pocket when more expenses were added.

So far, Gilbert taxpayers have shouldered all of the risks even though the town will have to start sharing gross revenues with the private company in three years.

The town’s big gamble might eventually pay off, as the ballpark has been an early success. Surely this is a wonderful facility for those who get to use it. But almost anybody can create Taj Mahals for recreational sports if someone else — in this case taxpayers — is forced to pay the bill.