Failure to finish Shiprock facility declared an emergency

State-of-emergency declarations are usually reserved for natural disasters, but proponents of the stalled Shiprock Home for Women and Children last week successfully petitioned the Navajo Nation Emergency Management Commission to declare the deadlock on the project a state of emergency.

In a document dated July 26, Commission Chairman Herman Shorty declared that inaction on the construction of the residential facility for abuse victims constitutes an emergency because it places abuse victims in danger and a $1.2 million construction grant from the state of New Mexico could be recaptured because of the state's budget crisis.

However, according to the home's attorney, Jim Zion, Navajo Nation bureaucrats continue to stall the project, which has been in the works for seven years.

"All that is needed to start and complete the work is a notice to proceed, and one has not been issued," Zion wrote in a press release.

"Further confusion and bureaucratic stalling, or even litigation, will likely keep the project from moving and cause the State of New Mexico to recapture the grant because it has expired or monies have not been obligated," he stated.

The grant is set to expire next June, which leaves little good construction weather this year, said Gloria Champion, the home's executive director.

The home is currently housed in a variety of fraying trailers that Champion says are overcrowded and expensive to rent.

The project's supporters direct most of their ire at Navajo Nation Deputy Attorney General Luralene Tapahe, whom Nageezi Chapter president and home proponent Ervin Chavez has accused of stalling the project.

Tapahe issued a written response stating that the next phase of the contract needs to be rebid because the original contractor, RJN Construction of Mancos, Colo., has violated government procurement regulations and has been suspended by the Navajo Housing Authority.

(Tapahe asked that her statement be run in its entirety but it was too long to include in this news article.)

In the statement, she contends that the state grant itself requires the tribe to follow certain procurement protocols, and that to allow RJN to finish the project without a bidding process would violate Navajo preference policies.

RJN contends it has an open-ended design-build contract that allows it to finish the project.

"The 'emergency justification' exception does not apply in situations such as this, where the urgent calls for the immediate awarding of a contract to one single company are based on the threat of a recall of grant funding," Tapahe wrote.

"Use of the 'emergency exception' in such cases would allow the creation of an emergency exception for every project (dozens) subject to a funding recall, and would seriously undermine the Navajo Nation's procurement laws and regulations," she stated.

Furthermore, Tapahe contends that if anyone is holding up the procurement process, it is RJN and the home's proponents.

"DOJ understands that a 'Request for Proposals' has been prepared for the completion of the project," she wrote. "This RFP can be issued almost immediately and a new firm, a Navajo certified firm, can be selected after a 10-day period of solicitation; a contract can be prepared, and the selected firm can begin work on the project within three weeks.

Meanwhile, while the wrangling continues, Champion says she is being forced to turn needy families away.

"We're having to refer families out and they have no where to go. We need more space now," she is quoted as saying in the press release.

Chavez, who helped procure the state grant, said immediate construction has the support of Shirley and New Mexico State Rep. Ray Begaye as well as chapter officials in the Northern Agency, and he believes Tapahe is making excuses to block the project.

"This has gotten way beyond common sense," he wrote in an e-mail. "This has gotten to be a quest of this lady to sink this project."

Tapahe, however, said, "Actually, if the decision to follow the proper procurement procedures was made shortly after DOJ made it known that awarding a contract to RJN presented significant legal problems, a properly selected firm could be working on the Project by now.

"Instead, what has happened is that the push for the awarding of a contract specifically to RJN, and to no one else, has continued. "

If the home proponents continue to insist on using RJN, it would actually cost the project money because NHA would withdraw the $364,000 it has allocated for the project, according to Tapahe.

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