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22
Jun 2009
No bids? No problem!
Posted by Scott Spielman
at 11:07 AM | Comments (1)
I won a bet with myself recently, and one of our regular post-ers inadvertently pointed it out.
Several months back, when city leaders here in Wayne started to get a handle on the budget situation, they said things like: we are going to look everywhere we can to find cost savings. We will leave no stone unturned.
To which I responded: I bet they won’t go out to bid for city attorney services or the web site contract.
Sure enough, they didn’t.
When you add these things up, it doesn’t amount to much money in the grand scheme of things. It’s the philosophy more than anything I’m concerned about. According to the charter, the city doesn’t technically have to request bids for these because they fall under ‘professional services’ provisions. And why do more than you have to, right?
Well, you do more than you have to because that’s the day and age we live in. Business as usual isn’t going to work.
Granted, it’d be hard—if not impossible—to find a better value to the city than its current attorney, Dick Clark. He volunteered to reduce the number of non-essential meetings he attends, saving the city more than $4,000. He’s also one of Wayne’s biggest cheerleaders and he supports virtually every charitable event and organization that serves the city.
The web site is another matter. I think the city missed the boat back when they revamped it to begin with—when they opted to use the person who did the original site instead of investigating the market. It’s no real surprise that they didn’t go out for bids this time around, but it makes me wonder why not. They will save $500 a month on it (reducing the contract to $2,000 per month), but to me, this is still a rock that was left unturned.
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