Paint job has City Hall coated in discontent

Eron Ben-Yehuda

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- A painting contractor smeared the city after being

fired this month for work that left City Hall looking like what one City

Councilman called a “barrio.”

“City officials are a bunch of idiots,” said Raphael Nissim, general

manager for Northern California-based Ionic Construction. “Their minds

are working 200 years backwards.”

The city tore up its contract with Ionic Aug. 11 because the company

“failed to perform,” said Don Noble, the city’s maintenance operation

manager.

“The quality of the work is very shoddy,” Mayor Peter Green said. “They

thought they could just whitewash a building, slap some paint and leave.”

But the city never informed Ionic about how big and difficult the job

of sprucing up City Hall’s appearance would be, Nissim said. And when

company officials tried to renegotiate the $170,000-plus contract, the

city refused to budge, he said.

“They never tried to work with us, nothing,” he said. “These people are

working like a mafia.”

The city has paid Ionic nothing so far, City Atty. Gail Hutton said.

How much, if any, money the city owes the company remains to be

determined, she said.

Ionic began its work in June and was supposed to finish by the end of

this month, Noble said. The job required not just painting but fixing

cracks and chips in the concrete that caused water to leak into City Hall

during the rainy season, he said.

Before being given the boot, Ionic applied a “considerable” amount of

primer coating but completed “very little” repair work and no painting,

the city’s project manager Steve Mutch said.

The cracks and chips are still clearly visible and rough strokes of

white primer cover large sections of City Hall. Yellow plastic ribbons

twist around wooden barricades that cordon off areas where the painters

used to work. All of which lend a “barrio appearance” to the seat of city

government, City Councilman Dave Garofalo said.

If Ionic truly represents the “lowest responsible” bidder for the

project as required by law, then maybe the term “responsible” needs to be

redefined, he said.

The city is looking for another company to do the work, which will take

about two months to complete, Mutch said.