Finance — 01/06/15 Page 10
were very close and he liked Siemens because they do their own work and they don’t subcontract. Some of it
had to do with the fact that some of the employees who would be doing the work for Siemens were from
Manchester. He suggested that we should negotiate with both parties to see whether we get price
concessions. Mayor Lozeau, what is your response to what he had to say?
Mayor Lozeau
| guess that | would say that | have confidence in Phillips and what they have offered. We started looking at
this when the Energy Consortium was put together under the Aero funds and Phillips was a player in that. |
think their product is a superior product and | like the idea of not having a middle man. | like the warranty and
other things that Phillips was able to give us. We had an in-house team that worked on this and that team
changed over the last few years because staff had come and go but everybody still collectively thought Phillips
was solid. | understand in Manchester that Siemens has employees there and they took a bit of a different
approach but again, one of my other concerns with Siemens was the way the CMAQ Project went. | think that
we’ve got a good proposal here and | think it’s a competitive bid and it was the lowest bid in Manchester. It’s
been the lowest bid in other states and | think if you go out to bid they will still be the lowest bid. | have
confidence in the work product that we’ve done. If somebody wants to go out to bid and start all over | have no
objection, that’s fine.
Alderman Donchess
When you say no middle man, what do you mean by that? Number two, | observed some problems with the
CMAQ Project as well but it was never really that concrete. What were the problems?
Mayor Lozeau
On a high level it was the timing of the work, being where we needed them to get work done, the fact that the
project took significantly longer than it had been bid for. We had things that had to be replaced and changed
out. When | look at Phillips | think here’s someone who has manufactured a product that we are purchasing
and they are going to have the oversight of it being installed. | think that makes a difference.
Alderman Donchess
Does Siemens not manufacture the bulb?
Mayor Lozeau
| don’t know, | can’t recall what products Siemens installed in Manchester but | know that in Franklin, Phillips
was installed as the product of choice. | just thought that we would benefit from the manufacturer of the
product who is well regarded in the industry for this to be the one that’s overseeing our project in Nashua. |
think they have more skin in the game.
Alderman Siegel
First of all | thank the staff because | certainly believe that people have been doing a lot of due diligence but |
am a little concerned. We do have some information here that is at least worth considering. Clearly the project
is worth doing. One thing that struck me about what Alderman Deane read was the statement about them
being willing to use whatever particular lighting fixture that we choose. They have said explicitly that is not an
issue for them and if we want to use Phillips products we can. My recollection on the CMAQ issues as
communicated to us at the time was that we had obsolete controllers and they couldn’t be sourced and that
became the item that cascaded the project to “Never Never Land” effectively but again, that’s my limited
understanding. | certainly wouldn’t challenge my understanding versus your understanding. | don’t know that
that particular project always translates into this one. It might and I’m not saying no to Phillips but | hear new
