News Briefs: Contractor Banned from Municipal Projects After Botched Repairs in California

An engineering and contracting company in Pismo Beach, California, has been banned from working on city projects for the next five years due to a botched lift station project that lost the city $323,000. The project was initiated in 2018 and included maintenance work on six lift stations along with collections system repairs. But the city claims there were numerous mistakes, and the project was delayed 69 days.“This is actually a very rare thing for a City Council to do and a very rare item,” City Manager Jim Lewis said at a recent council meeting, the New Times reports. “And it