Board of Aldermen 8-11-2020 Page 7
Alderman Jette
Well | appreciate that but | would feel more comfortable if a Committee reviewed this, | mean we are
agreeing to a guaranteed maximum price. | don’t Know about the rest of the Aldermen but | don’t know, |
don’t feel comfortable saying that this price is appropriate. | think it should be reviewed by a Committee; it
should be vetted before a Committee. Is there any problem is there a time crunch we are facing?
Director Cummings
Yes, yes — that will cause a problem.
Alderman Jette
OK well in the future, | would appreciate it if you would bring this before us before it causes a problem. You
know, you are asking us to approve something, | don’t know about the rest of the Aldermen, but | feel, | am
in a position where | am approving something that you know, | know it’s a reduction of the full amount that
originally was talked about. But | can’t stay, you know, if somebody asks me, if one of my constituents asks
me, what is this all about, is this price appropriate? | really don’t know, | guess | am relying upon you and |
don’t feel comfortable. | feel that we have a process. We have Committees and when things come before
the Board of Aldermen we are not supposed to be acting with a few days’ notice about something based
upon — you know with all due respect — your recommendation. | think it is appropriate for a Committee to
review it. | don’t know what the time crunch is, but | am telling you how | feel. So what is the time crunch,
what is going to happen if we don’t approve this tonight?
Director Cummings
Yes thank you and just so you know, | am having trouble with my internet connection so | apologize. So we
have deadlines and we have the contract ready to go and we are trying to keep on schedule. This is going
to be a year’s long process. If you delay this tonight it is essentially a one month delay before this Board
convenes again and you will push the whole project schedule. | am not the arbiter of the process, | am
following the process that has been previously outlined and just doing what was relayed to me. So that’s
just what we have done past practice and that’s why it is following this course of action.
President Wilshire
| am going to go to the Mayor first and | have a lot of hands up. Mayor?
Mayor Donchess
Well | would say that under the circumstances it didn’t seem that this coming back to the Committee a
second time was really necessary because of the very substantial price reduction that we achieved. So this
is the Public Health Building, the renovation of the Public Health Building has been in discussion for how
many years, eight years? The Board, the City did approve a contract for the renovation work up to a
maximum price of $3.6 million dollars. And now we are in a situation where we have leased space and we
are going to move Public Health down to Main Street for one year and this project needs to be completed
within one year in order to get them out of the leased space and back into the renovated space over at
Public Health.
Now certainly | understand Alderman Jette’s point that these matters should be reviewed by Committee,
but what | am trying to contribute here is that the $3.6 million was reviewed by a Committee, was approved
by a Committee and now as a result of Director Cummings negotiating and all the other things that have
gone into this, we have reduced the price below that previously approved by the Board of Aldermen by
$800,000,.00. So if we were increasing it by $800,000.00 | think we would have certainly thought, Oh my
God, this requires an explanation but since we have reduced it by $800,000.00 from the figure approved by
the Board of Aldermen | think everybody’s assumption was that people would be comfortable with that.
