Deception Alert – Sea Bright Hires an Architect


Newsflash – You DON’T Always Get What You Pay For

Our estimates that we based our Grant application on were: $2700 for architectural services, which included a site plan, staircase design, drawings of existing structure and planned modifications; and $5-7K for engineering services, which included before and after elevation certificates and structural designs. Comparatively, the Borough’s inflated final numbers of over $90K, for the same work do not make sense. A remarkable difference! So what’s really going on here? One example is that according to Mayor Long, the Borough owed their Architect a favor as he provided plans for the never-ending new beach and pool club idea, so he was forced upon us. How else could they make up the promised endless dollars he would have been paid if the beach and pool club plans had gone forward? Easy. Simply allowing him to recoup is potential loss, by inflating the costs on our project and promoting him to Borough Architect for future, locked-in designs. However and unfortunately for us — after 2 years of research, the new Borough Architect did not have an understanding of the building codes, — even though he was hired for at $25K (which turned into $33k), to provide management and plans!!!

This Architect also claimed that HE was in charge and running our project. With all these professionals in charge of our property, what could possibly go wrong?

At one point during the construction, the Architect and T&M Associates took the position that the replacement of rotted sill plates was not included in the Builder’s contract. They indicated that no sill plates were to be replaced by referring to the sill assembly as “blocking.” They held onto this contention, even though it was written 3 times on plans to “inspect and replace rotted sills.” Does anyone know how to read these plans? Even the Builder said he never witnessed 17 pages of plans for a FEMA project. Yet, for all that, the new design for our front entryway, faces Northeast, uses our old door without our protective storm door; the landing is so tight, that we can’t even get appliances or furniture through it. I guess it’s true what they say — Architects tend to be frustrated artists — but this is seriously ridiculous.

Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which… public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.

Alan Greenspan
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Author: Laurie