The Advisory Council reproaches the City Council for a verbal contract of 234,000 euros to finish the food market

The works on the San Blas Market have been longer and more expensive than initially planned. The budget of 3.12 million euros has been exceeded by nearly one million euros due to the problems that have arisen. The last peak of this extra cost amounts to 234,159 euros with a certification dated March 1 referring to “extraordinary works carried out by the contractor between the months of January and February 2024, that is, the deadline for completing the works has already expired.” established in the third agreed extension”, which was to be December 31, 2023.

The Advisory Council reproaches the City Council that these works “were not contemplated in the initial project”, also that they were “carried out by verbal order of the director of the works” and that therefore “they were carried out outside and without the coverage of the administrative contract.” and that a specific contractor was “selected to the exclusion of any others”, in this case Cotodista, winner of the project. The institution considers that the action is not “irrational or capricious” since there were “circumstances that required it” but it does confirm that there had to have been “the drafting of a modified project that redefined the object of the contract.”

For this reason, the Advisory Council considers that this action is “null and void” and that the award “was carried out completely and absolutely disregarding the procedure provided for this purpose, which was none other than […] “than that of submitting the tender to the complementary actions that may be necessary to carry out.”

Despite the nullity, the Advisory Council considers that the Cotodista construction company should not be penalized since it has carried out the work entrusted to it by the construction management and therefore asks the Logroño City Council to pay it the 234,159 euros for the work carried out in January and February.

From the City Council, the Councilor for Architecture Íñigo López-Araquistáin justifies that this is not an “abnormal” procedure. «From the beginning of the works, water damming was seen that had even caused damage to the structure of the building, archaeological remains appeared, the spaces did not adapt to the Transformation Center…». «»It is nothing illegal, it just goes outside the initial project. If the project management determines that the works have to continue because there are structural problems or for technical reasons, they must continue,” he argues.

According to López-Araquistáin, one of the problems is that the budget modification “should have started in 2022″ [en la anterior legislatura], but it was not done. And he justifies that the large modification of almost 900,000 euros to complete the works includes those 234,000 euros. «These works are carried out outside the date of the original contract. That’s why there is a part of that money, from before December 31, that follows a procedure, and another part, that of January and February, that goes the other way,” he insists. So the City Council assures that it had to request the process from the Advisory Council to “facilitate the collection once the opinion is published.”

An ‘obligation’ of consultation that the Advisory Council does not share and makes clear in its opinion, in which it warns of the “danger of instrumentalizing the legal institute of the review of null acts, which cannot become a kind of alternative channel to the procedure legal contracting, to the correct determination of the estimated value of the contract or to the control of the municipal Intervention” and reminds the City Council to be vigilant “to avoid irregular conduct such as what gives rise to the file.