09/20/2005 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 9/28120(15 at the meeting. There was no contract. It was done through a purchase order request which is a legal means for directors and division heads to avoid going through City Council and the Law Dept. to have written contracts. As long as items do not involve personal services and do not exceed $25,000, the competitive bid limit, they can be requested through the purchase order process. That is what took place with the fence. It did not go through the Law Dept. or the Mayor's office. In the past, there have been similaz issues which caused him concern, for example, the Joe Rice contract. The advice he provided to the administration, which was followed, was to request legislation because he believed it to be one project. Council approved legislation for a contract for the services. But the former Safety Director did not fallow up on the Council legislation, but rather purchase ordered those services by Joe Rice. As a result of that, he asked for an audit from the Finance Director. The Finance Director said at least it was paid in accordance with the appropriate financial law in Ohio and in our city. No law was violated by it being done by purchase order request. He contacted some people an Council and also included in his annual report at the beginning of this year a suggestion that Council take a look at regulating the purchase order request process. City Council is in charge of the contracting process and procedures for the city. In 99 times out of 100, the purchase order system works and the legislative process works. But there have been a couple of instances in the last year where the city has not been as well served as it can by expenditures going through the purchase order process rather than having a separate written contract with all the protections that would bring to the city. It is something for the new administration to look into. It's something that Council should participate in. He would be happy to sit down with Council at a committee meeting to try to resolve what he sees is a problem in that process. In this case, had there been a contract process and had it been reviewed by the Law Dept., everybody would have been on the same page and would have had an awareness that this particular contract needed to be performed on a certain date. Councilman Miller said he understood and accepted this explanation. The purpose of his bringing up the issue of the basketball courts was that Council authorized the funding for the fencing around the basketball courts and the volleyball courts in March or April. Here it is pretty close to the end of the outdoor recreation season for basketball and the fencing isn't up. Perhaps this did not get on the agenda of the Recreation Dept. soon enough. He is troubles by the feedback our employees got when they asked the company when the fence would be completed. The company would not commit to it and told us basically they would get to it when they could. He was concerned there was no contract that defined when it would be completed. Our residents deserve better. When we fund a project, it should not be done after the end of the season. He agrees that the Joe Rice issue was handled inappropriately. He appreciates Mr. Dubelko's background work and research. Both those issues have been referred to Councilman Barker as chairperson of the Recreation Committee for follow-up. Finance Director Copfer: 1) Regazding the purchase order process, it is a valid method of purchasing many items. When large expenditures come across her desk, she looks at the issue of whether the city's interests need to be protected. She tries to send those issues to the Law Dept. She also looks at, if it is under the public bidding, that there's three quotes attached, that they did their due diligence. The fence actually was sent through in July. However, they didn't have three quotes, so she sent it back to the Recreation division and it took them a i month to get three quotes from the other vendors. A purchase order is a valid method of 6