Finance Committee - 7/5/2017 Page 7
Mayor Donchess
Although it would be up to us this committee as well as the Board of Public Works to decide to whom the
contract would be awarded. | mean these people are not going to make that decision.
Alderman Cookson
Well within the contract it says they make the recommendation. They’re providing a recommendation to city
personnel as to who they would select.
Mayor Donchess
Yes and we're not disagreeing because they can recommend and we can follow...
Alderman Cookson
They can recommend themselves?
Mayor Donchess
| suppose they could.
Alderman Cookson
Okay. That seems like the absolute worst idea.
Mayor Donchess
Now I’m not sure we would follow that recommendation but. How would you like to proceed? Do you want to
try to include a provision saying that they can’t recommend themselves?
Alderman Cookson
| just want to know if they are in fact going to submit a bid.
Mayor Donchess
| think we expect they could but we don’t know for sure if they’re going to bid or not. Just like anyone else, we
don’t always get a bid on this. We develop a final design. We put out a bid. We don’t know who’s going to bid
until the bids are received.
Alderman Cookson
Just seems that they've been doing a lot of work along the way. They've done two previous phases and now —
I’m not sure why we’re giving them a seat at the table to help develop the documents that are going to be used
to assess a bid and then have them bid themselves. I’ve got a great idea. Here’s the criteria. | don’t need to
look at anybody else. I’m just going to select our team. | don’t agree with it.
Mayor Donchess
Two questions. Number one — do you want to bring someone in from Public Works, Engineering, who is more
knowledgeable and an expert in this to discuss this question? That’s number one.
