Higher bids, fewer bids, difficulties getting bidders results in project with 1 bid and 59% over estimate. Also, a City Council vote to reject all bids for a project because bids were 30% to over 120% over the estimate.

Millions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted in the City of Buena Park because of a policy pushed by Mayor Connor Traut as he attempts to gain favor with the politically powerful Big Labor bosses in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Traut is essentially overcharging the public for construction projects by giving away no-bid, sole-source labor contracts called Project Labor Agreements or PLAs. These “deals” discriminate against over 80% of local construction workers, increasing the project price. In 2022 Traut proposed and pushed a PLA that helped his political donors but cost City of Buena Park taxpayers over a half-million dollars in overruns on just one project.

The Buena Park Mayor even changed the name of the controversial “Project Labor Agreement” to a “Community Workforce Agreement” in an attempt to hide the special interest deal for his political donors.

On March 8, 2022, the City Council approved a Community Workforce Agreement (CWA) between the City of Buena Park and the Los Angeles and Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council with a five-year term effective July 1, 2022

As Eric Christen from the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction wrote to Traut and the other Buena Park Councilmembers, “…you are now stuck with this disaster until 2027. This canine affection for big labor special interests is now going to cost your taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.”

If you doubt that Connor Traut was behind the PLA/CWA special interest deal, look no further than the local labor bosses, who posted on their website as recently as February 12, 2025 that, “…In Buena Park, we saw firsthand the difference that Connor Traut made as a councilmember and mayor. With his leadership, the City of Buena Park entered into its first Community Workforce Agreement for infrastructure projects…”

So, let’s review how this special interest deal is working out for taxpayers. It takes years to build many of these public works projects, so in an effort to review the success or failure of this construction policy, the Buena Park City Council scheduled in November 2023 an “Update on the City’s Implementation of the Community Workforce Agreement.”

Beforehand, City staff had held a meeting with a couple of local union bosses to review some of the “challenges” the City has faced with administering the CWA agreement. The review stated that, “The City has faced challenges in receiving an adequate number of bids on some of the projects listed above, mainly attributed to contractor’s unwillingness to abide by the CWA. This has been experienced mainly on the projects that require specialty work such as pool improvements or park improvements. The City has also faced challenges in soliciting professional services for geotechnical engineering services and surveying services for the construction monitoring and staking of projects that are required to abide by the CWA.”

Industry Associations like the Western Electrical Contractors Association and the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction warned Buena Park what a Project Labor Agreement would mean for taxpayers. Now the City has had to find out this reality the hard way. There was no rationale for a PLA. There was no data in support of it. This appeared to be just simply a political payoff to donors. Well, the results are now in.

In the 2023 review of the PLA/CWA, Connor Traut’s own city staff has made it quite clear why Buena Park projects are coming in so far above the estimates. It’s the PLA. Because he decided to hand Big Labor bosses a monopoly agreement for five years instead of figuring out if it even worked for the city and giving the City an out clause, taxpayers are now stuck with this policy until 2027.

And the challenges continued to go unresolved. In April 2024, theBuena Park City Council had to vote to reject all the bids for a PLA/CWA project. This project was for the Smith Murphy Park and Carl Brenner Park Accessibility Improvement Project for recently renamed Friendship Park and Carl Brenner Park, and re-advertise the project for bids. On March 28, 2024, six bids were received and publicly opened by City staff. The total bid amounts ranged from $1,012,847 to $1,779,240. This project was budgeted at $800,000, so the bids were 30% to over 120% over the estimate or $212,847-$979,240 over budget. The lowest, qualified bidder significantly exceeds the project’s allocated budget, and as a result, staff recommended the rejection of all bids

Then in July 2024, there was another whopper PLA failure in City of Buena Park. The City received 1 bid, 59% over the estimate, and the one bidder was not qualified.  The total bid amount for the bidder was $1,099,628. The Engineer’s estimate for this project is $690,000, so the one bid came in over $400,000 over budget.

It is clear the City has faced challenges in receiving an adequate number of bids mainly attributed to contractor’s unwillingness to abide by the CWA. Higher bids, fewer bids, difficulties getting bidders results in project with 1 bid 59% over the estimate. Also, a City Council vote to reject all bids for a project because bids were 30% to over 120% over the estimate.

Connor Trout wasted tax dollars with this special interest deal on city construction when he and his City Council members decided to move forward with a wasteful and discriminatory Project Labor Agreement (PLA) on all city work. It always reduces bidders and increases costs for taxpayers. By implementing a PLA, Traut codified discrimination into the city charter by making it all but impossible for Merit Shop construction workers, apprentices and contractors-who comprise 90% of the local construction workforce-from being able to work on projects.