The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

It’s on again!

Here’s the good news: the Bureau of Reclamation plans on restarting its fire station project. The bad news is that no one has any confidence the bureau will ever finish the project.

This project has had more starts than the fleas on a hound dog.

You can tell it’s a government job because it’s going to take deep pockets to pull this out.

Now the bureau is going to find another contractor for the restart. It seems the contractors are only part of the problem. The rest lies with inspecting the work that is being done. The bureau has some problems here.

The bureau needs to get its name on the recovery list so they will have the money to finish the job.

If they could just hold off a few months, maybe the chamber of commerce could use it for a haunted house.

It’s about the spookiest place in the community — just a short job to get it ready for Halloween.

This project came to us from the same people who brought us the “geezer beach” fishing problem, and who gave us the 30-mph speed between Grand Coulee and Coulee Dam.

Get the picture. No awards on this project.

We can feel sorry for the bureau fire crew that has been hanging on and waiting for a number of years.

It would still be refreshing for the bureau to disclose the estimated finished price.

The fire station nears half the time workers took to finish Grand Coulee Dam.

It all could be a conspiracy by lawyers for work, since we all know how hard it is to make those boat payments.

This would be a great time for someone to develop a lottery on the finish date. Some good money to be made here.

The bureau is conducting its own investigation. It could go something like this, with the head man talking to man who was overseeing the project. We’ll call him Jones.

Head man: Jones, I am doing an investigation into the fire station mess. Tell me what you did to supervise the project.

Jones: I drove by the site every day while on my trip to Safeway to buy my Twinkies.

Head man: Twinkies, I like Twinkies, Jones. How many Twinkies in a pack?

Jones: Six, sir. Head man: Drop a couple off to me sometime. Jones:  will do, boss.

Head man: Jones, did you ever go on site? Jones: Once sir, but all three Sani-cans were busy, so I left.

Report from head man: Thanks Jones for the Twinkies. I can find no fault in how we handled the project from our end.

The head man heard the old joke about how many people work at the dam. The answer: about half.

So the efficiency expert (Smith) was called in. Head man:  Smith, get to the bottom of this.

Smith’s report: Sir, the “do nothings” and the “know nothings” are about in equal number. So, I put the do nothings on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the know nothings on Tuesday and Thursday, then switch them the next week.

I also moved the timecard machine closer to the coffee pot so it wouldn’t be so difficult for employees to not work.

Head man: Great job, Smith.

Jones and Smith are both up for promotion.

More to come.