Goldner Stands Up For Local Companies
Today’s JG fronts a story on councilwoman Karen Goldner and her efforts to keep our tax dollars local. At issue is the city and county’s IT services contract that will likely be awarded to one of two finalists which are both foreign companies.
“I, as a city councilwoman, cannot say I want Fort Wayne to develop a technology community and at the same time vote to offshore this contract,” she said. “In my opinion local businesses were not given the consideration they merited.”
In the comments section here at FWP Goldner said she plans to introduce her “Buy Local” ordinance at the June 3 city council meeting. This ordinance would give additional points in the selection process for “Emerging Business Enterprises (EBE’s) which are small businesses, including minority and women-owned but not limited to that.”
Meanwhile the city’s CTO Clifford Clark continues to defend the RFP by using the line that the money will stay local and now he’s got commissioner Nelson Peters saying the same thing:
City Pools Open For Memorial Day Weekend
From the city’s press release:
McMillen and Northside Pool to Open - Fort Wayne, IN: McMillen Pool will open Sunday, May 25 at 1:30pm and Northside Pool will open Saturday, May 24 at 12:30pm. The pools will be open for Memorial Day weekend with $1 admission each day.
It also notes that all pools will open on May 31st. Seems like it might be a little chilly for swimming tomorrow but what do I know…
City Website Now Fully Searchable
One of my biggest complaints about the city website during the Open Government Task Force meeting was that the PDFs weren’t searchable. The city clerk kept track of all the city council votes on the various ordinances but they were logged in PDFs I couldn’t search. So in order to find out how a particular councilmember voted on any given topic you had to know the exact meeting the vote was held and download that specific PDF - a cumbersome process to be sure.
Well I’m happy to report that the city’s Google search is now indexing their PDFs (and other documents) so you can find this information without needing any a priori knowledge about the date a vote occurred. Small things like this make a big difference to citizens using the city’s website so kudos to Clifford Clark for taking the task force input seriously…
Odd Software Applications Found On City and County Computers (UPDATE)
I was perusing the documents provided by the city as part of their IT contract that’s up for bid and I stumbled upon an excel spreadsheet that lists all the software applications running on city computers. Here’s a few of the more interesting ones listed:
Age of Empires III
budbeerdt.exe
BullockSandra2.exe
Carl The Caveman
doolhotcouples1.zip (note: dool = Days of our Lives)
GreyOlltwit’s Mini Golf
Little Shop Of Treasures
Monopoly Here & Now Edition
Star Wars Empire at War
The Dr Laura Media Center
Update (5/24): The JG covered this story today (no attribution of course) and Goldner’s quote is similar to my thinking on the matter:
Giving the entire list to all prospective companies, as well as the public, however, does seem a bit embarrassing.
“It makes the city and the county look a little silly,” she said.
Knuth Offers Up Alternative Solution To Information Technology Outsourcing
Well that didn’t take long. County council candidate Kevin Knuth has issued a press release condemning the city’s decision to “outsource” local government’s IT work.
“Sending taxpayer dollars from Allen County to overseas companies makes no sense, especially in our current economic situation,” said Knuth. “It makes more sense to keep the $25 Million here in Allen County- where it will bolster our local economy.”
Knuth also introduces an alternative plan which he calls the “Earn and Learn” program. This program would have the city manage students from our local universities who would ultimately handle the day-to-day operations for the city and county IT department:
The “Earn and Learn” program would require the City/County to hire a small information management staff who would oversee paid interns drawn from local colleges that offer information technology degrees. “My idea is to create a training facility within city/county government. The big obstacle facing graduates is lack of experience. The opportunity for these students to learn the ins and outs of large computer networks would leave them better prepared for future employment,” said Knuth.
This sounds like a much better option than sending the work to a foreign company. There are plenty of students at our local universities that are capable of handling the city’s IT needs. This reminds me of a comment made by councilman Mitch Harper who said that local government needs to better utilize the community’s collective intelligence to solve government problems. Mayor Tom Henry has also called for an eduction summit where employers and universities can get together and discuss the community’s vocational needs.
It appears Knuth’s solution is in line with that train of thought and at the very least should be seriously considered before any contracts are awarded…
City & County Information Technology Work Going To A Foreign Company
Nicole Pence of Indiana News Center reports that the city and county are rebidding their IT services contract and that the two finalists are both foreign owned companies.
Out of eight potential bids, the group is now down to two: “ATOS Origins” and “CMC limited”. Both have operations in the united states, but their headquarters are in France and India. Clarke argues even if these are foreign based companies, the money would stay local.
Now I’m extremely jingoistic when it comes to government contracts and that’s why I could never support this decision. Essentially I don’t think taxpayer dollars should ever go to a foreign company as long as there are companies stateside willing to do the work. I also disagree with Clifford Clarke that “the money would stay local”. But first, here’s the rest of what he said about that:
There is nothing about the offering that they have to take off-shore. Absolutely nothing. And, we will make sure that doesn’t happen via contract.”
Clarke will not tell INC how much money the two final bids are being negotiated for. He says people employed with the ACS contract now, could be hired on with the new company.
Well they’re certainly going to take the profit overseas as they aren’t doing this work out of the kindness of their hearts. I have a hard enough time watching the profits (if there ever are any) from Harrison Square go to Atlanta but this just crosses the line. Our tax dollars need to stay in this community whenever possible and nobody can convince me that Fort Wayne doesn’t have the expertise to run the city and county’s IT services…
Allen County Election Board moving at turtle speed concerning my complaint
As the readers of this blog know I filed a complaint with the Allen County Election Board on April 19th, 2008. You can read the post and the letter:
http://fortwaynepolitics.com/2008/04/my-complaint-to-the-allen-county-election-board/
Today is May 22nd, 2008. It has been four and a half weeks since I filed my complaint.
I have as yet to hear a single word concerning my complaint. I did not get a response to my email, my fax, or any of the three letters I mailed to the members of the Allen County Election Board.
Mike Sylvester
Rain Garden Contract Goes Down In Flames
Mike Sylvester’s post touched on the rain garden project that was discussed at the last city council meeting. The impetus for this project comes from the city’s consent decree with the EPA and is part of the city’s fines related to the combined sewage overflow problem. During negotiations the EPA told the city they needed to develop some kind of green infrastructure project and city utilities decided on a rain garden project.
City utilities idea was to hire a consultant to create a public education program as well as 16 rain gardens among other things. Of course city utilities has to spend a certain amount of money on a rain garden project but the one they chose seems to deliver very little bang for their buck. In fact I’ve never seen a proposal before city council crash and burn like this one did. I mean just watch the reaction from the various councilmembers - they’re in complete disbelief that this is what city utilities decided to spend the money on. Here’s a montage of various clips during the discussion:
John Shoaff Questions The Pace Of Harrison Condo Sales
Councilman John Shoaff brought up an excellent point during the Harrison Square discussion at Tuesday’s city council meeting. He pointed out that Barry Real Estate has only been able to sell 5 condos to date yet they think they can sell 25 more in the next 60 days or so. It seems unlikely this will happen but Chris Schoen answered Shoaff’s question by essentially saying they’ve been getting their marketing materials and sales pitch together and now they’re ready to start selling condos.
So I guess the previous few months was just a dry run?
Commissioners Make Their Case For Raising Taxes
The county commissioners made their presentation at yesterday’s city council meeting for why they need to raise the wheel tax to pay for bridge maintenance. They went through a series of slides that pitted perception vs fact which you can watch below. One of these slides said that they cannot reallocate the $11 million earmarked for Maplecrest Extension but this is not true.
Congressman Souder publicly stated they could ask for these funds to be reallocated but the truth is the commissioners don’t want to do that. They would rather raise your taxes while simultaneously embarking on the largest transportation project in the history of Allen County. And to make matters worse, the finances simply don’t add up which means we’ll all inevitably be bailing this project out.
