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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council January 30, 2006 Page 17 . A motion to authorize an expenditure in the amount of $8,739.50 to Fuller Furniture & Flooring, LLC for carpeting for Civic Hall and the hallway ramp. Mrs. Mills, seconded by Mr. Marrie moved to authorize an expenditure in the amount of $8,739.50 to Fuller Furniture & Flooring, LLC for carpeting for Civic Hall and the hallway ramp. Dr. Parker mentioned that the item was not unanimously approved by the Finance Committee. Considering the amount, it is questioned as to whether or not we should have gotten additional estimates. In the past, we have. We have not done that recently. Mr. Buckholtz asked Mr. Diemert what the limit was for going out to bid. Mr. Diemert indicated it was $15,000.00. To clarify, Dr. Parker indicated that going out to bid versus estimate is different. Dr. Parker requested that we check our pricing to make sure that we are getting prices in the right range. We have not done this in a while. Whether it is comparison of quality and price. Mr. Saponaro indicated that it was not directed at this vendor in particulax, but that we should adopt this practice. Dr. Paxker felt that at this point we should have done it with this item. Mr. Buckholtz indicated that a lot of these things are being done by the department heads behind the scenes. Mr. Buckholtz pointed out the memo regarding moving the finance meeting to Caucus and Safety and Service night. Safety and Service would be at 7:00 and Finance would be at 7:30. This gives a two week window of time and would allow us to research the items and still have a final finance meeting prior to Council. Mr. Marrelli further clarified that it is not always advantageous to have numerous vendors bidding on the same projects. If we have carpeting, for example, to have four or five or six vendors doing warranty work and service work, it gets to be clumsy when you are trying to figure out who did what, when did it happen, when is the warranty good for. It is a consistency issue. We need to establish some kind of consistency throughout with the types of materials and installations that were warranted. Mr. Metzung added that when we did the initial request for carpeting of this building, we did go out and went through the bidding process. This company came in as the lowest and best bidder at tliat time. We have carried on, much as you would a change order in many other projects, that is what we have done in this case. We chose the company that had given us the best bid when we did the first detailed specs for carpeting and we have stuck with him. Dr. Paxker indicated that there has been a number of change orders. Dr. Parker realizes that there axe times that we cannot make decisions based on the entire project at one point. At certain points along the way, we have to have a litmus test or a way to really get a sense that we axe spending our tax dollars wisely and certain points where we stop and get estimates or bids and