2008 0117 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting January 17,2008 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida 12D. Add-On: Discussion regarding Public vs. Private Sector Comparison to Achieve High Level of Service for Public Works Function. Action: City Manager Szerlag commended his staff as all he said to Information Technology Director Fonseca and his task force was that our website doesn't look too good, can you make it look better, and this is what they came up with. He said along those same lines, he met with Assistant City Manager Vera and Public Works Director Rick Conner and indicated that when we went out to bids for Lukes' Landscaping it would also be a good idea to see if we could compete with the private sector in terms of a very specific scope of work because it is very important to have a first class City in terms of how we look. He said that Public Works Director Conner did most of the work on this starting from scratch, with the landscape bid and to figure out how many hours it would take to give us a first class community in a number of areas that are cleaning and maintaining Collins Avenue, Parks, Beach Accesses, restrooms, bus shelters, parking lots, public facility grounds, street and stormwater maintenance, and repairs and general maintenance. He said the bottom line is that we can hire an additional eight (8) full-time personnel in the Public Works Department and still be more cost effective and efficient than the private sector by about $40,000 annually, and at the same time increase our level of service. He said the recommendations at this point will be formalized in February but he wanted to get ajump start ifthe Commission agrees so we can advertise for the full-time Public Works personnel: 1) an acknowledgement that we can do a better job than the private sector and cheaper; and 2) that the bid award and the landscape elements go to Lukes' Landscaping. He said Lukes' is the lowest qualified bidder based on a best value approach, not the lowest bidder per se, but when you do a best value approach you look at other elements besides just the bid spec that are written down, there was about a $19,000 difference between the low bidder and Lukes'. Public Speakers: none Public Works Director Rick Conner said that this is truly a complex issue because we had so many variables and so many options which is good, and he has been working for about a month trying to decipher the bids and he noted some key issues. He said we never had a real solid contract and so he wanted to start from scratch and write something where we can really look at what each item costs us to do that particular job. He said in the bid there is something like 434 permutations, about 140 items, and we wanted to see the best way to accomplish the tasks. He said that when they got the bids and opened them, that was the basis of getting the information, which is rock solid, and in the last several months he feels that the Commission is looking for something more than just the status quo, he thinks the Commission is interested in getting things done, getting them done quickly, and being very proactive in raising the bar significantly, and as he was reviewing the bids he saw the opportunity of taking us to that next level of service and be able to react and do the things that we need to do. He said this kind of package gives us the resources to do the things the Commission wants done, and we also have to rely on the private sector as there are things they do much better than what we can do, and there are things that we can do more effectively and cost effectively than they do because we know exactly what we want and we know how we want the product to be determined. He said the bottom line that we have given the Commission are three (3) general options to consider: 1) we do privatization, we say let's pay it, we reduce our staff however we have to and we go out and we have somebody else do 17