As someone who works in government, I can assure you that isn’t the case. None of it has gone through an RFP process yet. That is backwards to the process. Before designing/planning/etc, the bonds have to be approved. This is just the taxpayer authorizing the city to issue debt (bonds) up to the amount specified. There is no guarantee they’ll even spend that total, it’s a “not to exceed” number. You always ask for a bit more than you think you’ll need as you have to account for inflationary costs, changes in the market (a big one right now being tariffs and the uncertainty that causes across all the various things that go into a new facility). The City hires outside consultants familiar with the construction of these types of facilities and makes comparisons to other similarly sized entities who have recently built such facilities as well as market and industry data to come up with estimates. All of this is estimated costs though when making bond proposals as the city hasn’t yet been authorized by the taxpayers to go forward with actual planning, land procurement, etc. All those steps would independently be competitively bid once the city gets the voters approval to move forward with the various propositions.

As for the cost of the facility, the structure may very well be a lot lower than that, now think about the technology within it, the furniture and fixtures, etc. That stuff adds up super fast in an overall new facility build out. I operate ~$2m worth of equipment that fits in a single 400 sq ft room (data center).

It’s actually a lot harder to cheat the system than you would think and Plano’s procurement department is staffed by some of the most stickler of following the procurement laws, etc, to the T, which is a good thing. Council isn’t involved in the bid process, they are the last step after all procurement law processes have been followed and city staff presents their recommendations to council based on the processes.