Finance Committee Page 6
August 3, 2016
that everything is rounded off the nearest thousand dollars and I’ve never seen a quote like that, especially
when it involves equipment replacement because just don’t cost even thousand amounts. Given that they
didn’t originally give us a breakdown and it was asked for and they threw this out and having done a number of
contracts in the past, | look at this as though they are just throwing numbers over the wall to us and that rings a
big red bell in my mind and it says we should go out to bid. We have a working elevator and there is no real
justification for sole source unless there is literally no other vendor that supplies these services. | can’t support
this now. What! see in front of me does not convince me that we are getting the best value for the city.
Alderman O’Brien
Mr. Hunnewell, is this another gun to the head? We have a Stanley elevator so do we have to use Stanley
parts, which is part of the problem. If it were an Otis elevator then we would have to deal Otis. Am | correct in
assuming that?
Mr. Jay Hunnewell, Building Manager
No, | believe they are non-proprietary, we could have another elevator installed and Stanley elevator could still
service that elevator after the original warranty is up.
Alderman Siegel
In fact, in the documents that we were provided with the agenda you can see that they are providing a
controller which is specifically no proprietary. | assume that means that other vendors may have access to it. |
don’t know what the vendor situation is out there so | speak out of ignorance so | don’t want to just say no and
preclude us from fixing the elevator but this doesn’t smell right to me at all.
Mr. Kooken
| should clarify that the elevator that we currently have is not a Stanley elevator. We have Stanley contracted
to do any repairs on it.
Alderman Wilshire
Why was there a decision to sole source this?
Mr. Hunnewell
| believe it was not so much sole source as that they have a lot of knowledge with all of the elevators in the city
based on the maintenance that they provide. That was the justification.
Alderman Wilshire
| know they are a reputable company but there are other reputable companies out there too. | was just curious
why you went that way.
Alderman Siegel
| don’t want to stifle any discussion but | don’t see any specific reason why we need to act on this now. | would
like at least have information if there are other vendors out there. It might make sense to go out to bid because
we are talking about $184,000 and a breakdown in cost to me does not look right at all. | am not comfortable
with this.
