Finance Committee Page 6
January 4, 2017
situations. It could come from contingency but this is the proposal. If we took it from contingency it would
require a transfer and not simply an approval of a contract but we could. Contingency would probably require
a resolution.
Alderman Siegel
| understand that in this particular case and | am kind of looking forward. We have had some experience, not
with this administration, with some creative uses of several of our funding sources and | want to keep us from
being too creative because that sort of just bypasses the approval process that we have in the budgetary
discussions that we have every year.
Alderman O’Brien
Mr. Codagnone, can you explain the vetting process that one goes through to look at these contracts? We as
Alderman put great faith in you to come up with the best deal possible. Is this the best deal possible?
Mr. Codagnone
Normally we would go through a bidding process but with the door access we are using the same company
that we’ve used across the city and historically they have been high in some places and low in other places
but they have also been very good at what they have done. It doesn’t always come down to the best price but
the best work. It took them over a year to do the parking garage because of the extreme weather we had that
year and they lost money. They will work very hard for us and they will do the right thing and if we need them
to make it transparent they will do that. If we have issues with it even if it’s not under warranty they will come
back and fix it so from a quality standpoint they are very good. On the IP telephony side this happens to be
the company that we are using right now to do the citywide telecom project for all city locations. Typically if
they quote $2,000 for cabling they are throwing that number out there almost as a not-to-exceed, granted that
should be spelled out there but if they don’t use it all then they don’t usually charge us that much.
Alderman Siegel
I’d like that to be explicit. The last thing | want to see is someone getting hurt because this is delayed. We do
meet every two weeks and I’m just not comfortable with this contract with what | see know. | guess I’d like to
ask Assistant Chief Rhodes what his sense is of the timing and if delaying it by two weeks...| mean I’ve got
the taxpayer responsibility and the responsibility as an Alderman to be careful and look out for our personnel.
Assistant Chief Rhodes
| think | can honestly say that our civilian employees understand how city government works and that we will do
the right thing but it can take time. In 49 days we’ve had 64 entrants into our program; yesterday we had 8 alone
and 4 of those were at headquarters with 2 of them being handled by our civilian staff. We could go another two
weeks and have no one or we could have another 6. We are just hopeful that there will be a resolution soon.
Alderman Wilshire
| really appreciate what the fire department is doing. | think all employees need to feel safe in their workplace
and | know that Alderman Siegel’s concerns are valid and | think he will support it once all of the ducks are ina
row. | don’t think two weeks is all that unreasonable and | intend to support it but | too would like to see the nuts
and bolts of the project.
Alderman Cookson
Once this is approved and it goes through the process that it needs to, how quickly does the solution get
implemented at these two locations?
