Why are Amarillo employees doing Baker Tilly’s work?

A review of hundreds of pages of documents provided to City Manager News show that high priced Baker Tilly consultants are using Amarillo employees to do their work.

And now, at today’s council meeting, Baker Tilly is asking for more than $9,000 to send a representative to attend three meetings in person.

Can you believe that? The audacity.

Since the Amarillo taxpayers are essentially paying twice for a portion of Baker Tilly’s $50,000 contract, the council should ask the company to send the representative for free as a “good faith” gesture in light of these revelations.

Imagine you hire some high-priced “experts” at Baker Tilly who are all based in California to do your charter review.

Don’t you think these experts should be the one evaluating and determining the comparable cities they are going to use to form the foundation of their entire study and analysis?

Nope – they pawned that off onto City Secretary Stephanie Coggins along with a laundry list of other chores.

Let’s take a look at the screenshots below:

While I don’t doubt that Coggins offered to be of assistance, I highly doubt she thought she would become a Baker Tilly grunt.

This is ridiculous in my opinion.

What exactly is Baker Tilly doing for $50,000 — er, I mean — $59,000, that the employees of Amarillo could not do “in-house?”‘

Another interesting aspect to this contract amendment is that none of the individuals listed on the scope of work for this project for Baker Tilly are actually coming out for the in-person visits. Baker Tilly is sending a Dennis Hawkins — someone that seemingly has little to no online footprint.

It is unclear to me what this person’s expertise or specialty is and why Baker Tilly is sending someone that was not mentioned in the original scope. In the hundreds of pages of documents we have received so far, I have not see any mention of this individual though it is possible I missed a reference.