RAGS TO RICHES TO RAGS TO RICHES TO RAGS

RAGS TO RICHES TO RAGS TO RICHES TO RAGS, (San Francisco Chronicle)

Ricardo Ramirez and his story touched a nerve with me that I just had to write about. Like electricity, I know enough to be dangerous, seems as if Ramirez and I have that in common, although I have a better track record then apparently poor old Ricky does. He's created and lost more businesses then Kobe Bryant has shots on the basketball court.

Ramirez started and lost businesses of mainly construction related business, from rental equipment to road construction, seems as if he's done pretty much all of it. Ramirez, a former Marine Corps judo instructor spent more then 20 years as a paving contractor with little to show for it. Between a long list of lawsuits, business failures and bankruptcies, Ricardo seemed to get that break, all of us hope for, when he latched onto a San Francisco and state program for minority-owned businesses.

I remember those programs in Michigan, the one black for every white, qualifications be dammed, it didn't work in Michigan and at least with Ramirez, it didn't work in San Francisco and the bay area. In 1998 Ricardo begin turning out low priced, locally produced concrete for projects that included earthquake retrofit work on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. By 2003, his Pacific Cement company was supplying a third of the concrete used in San Francisco's public works projects, a good business if you can get it.

Riding around in big cars, wearing $500 cowboy boots and flashing a big bankroll, Ramirez seemed to be on top of his world. Although his business would never be called "a well oiled machine," he none the less gave off the appearance of a well heeled connected bay area businessman. He had donated nearly $100,000 to state and local politicians and seemed to have made the big-time when he was fined for making illegal contributions. Seems as if your nobody until your fined for illegal contributions.

Even after complaints emerged about some of his concrete being of poor quality, he still got major contracts on city and state projects. Apparently Ricardo's political donations did have some effect in the form of grease in the procurement of at least some of these projects.

Ramirez and his company has a long list of alleged poor quality of product delivered to construction sites which begin in 2004. San Francisco officials said that Pacific Cement's concrete failed a number of strength tests. In a 1985 blacktop paving job, applied by a Ramirez West Bay Contractors, Engineers Incorporated was faulted by city officials for defective work, the blacktop in several areas started to break apart just weeks after it was put down.

In 1997 a Ramirez project replaced sewers along a San Francisco street and the city refused to pay his company nearly $40,000 because of shoddy workmanship and unfinished work. This Jackson street project was a particular tough project for Ramirez and his company, due to third party claims for illegal debris dumping, flooded basements, electrical outages in an apartment building and restaurant and, runaway equipment damaging a concrete truck. A track record was being established.

Although Ramirez lacked knowledge about the concrete business, he became the only provider for the city, certified as a disadvantaged minority contractor, ensuring his success. Operating by the seat of his pants, for Ramirez, this was his modus-operandi, he was getting so good at slinging the bull, that he begin to believe his own crap.

It seems that Ricardo was not the only one that was good at (putting city officials in a dark room and feeding them mushrooms twice a week,)  Pacific Cement, poured several loads of sub-standard concrete in a skateboard park and the city ordered Pacific Cement to remove and replace the concrete at his own expense.

That same year, 2000, Pacific was accused of supplying another batch of poor material at the Golden Gate Park reservoir and pump station, a project with more then $180,000. However the prime contractor got Ramirez off the hook by telling city officials that "Pacific had in no way compromised the project." The Ramirez concrete business was going so will, that by 2003 Pacific Cement had exceeded a ceiling of $750,000 net worth for eligibility for disadvantaged contractor status.

Ricardo Ramirez appealed this decision, saying that he had made mistakes in his application and believe it or not, he was allowed to keep his status as a disadvantaged contractor. By 2004 Pacific Cement had learned the advantages of processing concrete from road rubble, (crushed concrete from old roads) and some of the re-bar that was co-mingled.

Ramirez was warned that recycled concrete did not meet specification for structural projects, but the company went ahead with grinding chucks of concrete and old buildings complete with pieces of wood, glass, wire and whatever else was connected with the buildings. Within months recycled concrete and building parts were all thrown together in the Pacific Cement product and was a common practice.

By 2005 the company was getting orders from the city of San Francisco, surrounding towns and the California Transportation Authority. There were thousands of yards of concrete supplied to scores of city, and state projects, some made with the sub-par mixture. Core samples have been taken on some of the concrete in no particular order and as yet nothing suspect has been discovered.

But the evidence has continued from a number of former employers who tell of rejected material, of recycled mixtures being used in the mix. Some of the biggest public works projects in the bay area were supplied with Pacific Cement material. Rebuilding of freeway approach and exit ramps have Pacific concrete, and an extension of the Muni's light-rail service.

Without exception, each time that Ricardo Ramirez was hauled on the carpet for poor materials, poor business practices, or delays in product, Ramirez cited discrimination against the small businessman, or worse, racial  discrimination.

Over the past decade Ramirez has walked a tight rope, skillfully danced around legal disputes, used his gift of gab and his political connections to side-step almost every roadblock. I'm sure when he has been cornered, he has lowered his eyes  and played the poor immigrant from Mexico.

His defenders call him a good family man, a good active Latino person, a self made man, a Marine Corp drill instructor during the Vietnam War. One defender stated that Ricardo and Pacific Cement were only doing what was needed to survive in a business climate were "white folks" had it in for Ramirez from the start.

He was a Mexican and whites didn't want him in on it, he tried to cut the corners so he could make money like them, and now they say he is a big old criminal, that is what it boils down to, is the way one defender put it.

Ricardo Ramirez's attorney stated that the amount of disputed concrete is so small as to be insignificant. "It's a contamination problem, it's easy to have a contamination problem and the problem was not deliberate, and it makes no sense to claim it was  a substantial  substitution of concrete.

What is clear and undisputed fact is that it costs less then $3.00 to make a ton of recycled concrete and $20 a ton to buy just the rock for a real mix of concrete. There is a strange link between the Michigan equal rights program and Pacific Cement. Like the man said, "it's all in the mix."