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The
fly wishes to thank all of our sources
that contribute to this area. If you
want to contribute, just email us with your information. However,
we must be
able to verify the information in some way before it will be posted.
The Fly hears that
there was another unauthorized abstract
submitted to the Fund
For The
Economic Future besides the one that Councilman Murphy wanted. Quick
action on
the part of Mayor Rothschild and Mayor Leiken of Shaker Heights
resulted
in the
removal of this abstract. The abstract for item 62 of the Fund’s list
read,
“The
partners propose to finalize the consolidation of three Fire/EMS
departments into a
single Fire/EMS district.”
Most
troubling about this
is that the City Manger of
Cleveland Heights made the
submission without approval from either of the other
two cities involved. In fact, both
the Mayors had previously said no to this plan!
Perhaps the CH City Manager
needs
to remember that his authority stops at the borders of his city.
While collaboration is a worthy goal, one would
think that city officials would remember
that we, the citizens of University
Heights, should have the ability to approve or reject
such a potential major change in our city services!
Sensible Salting
is
what the city calls the current salting policy. As we
slip
and slide on the sides, at least the mains are easily
traveled and the Service
Director has promised that when safety is threatened
the city will do the sides.
The upside
is that it is good for the environment since less salt will find
its way
through the storm sewers to the lake once we thaw out! How
did we get into
sensible salting? Well, there is a salt shortage this year
that drove costs up and
put salt in short supply. UH belongs to a purchasing
consortium called NEOSO
(Northeast
Ohio Sourcing Organization) along with a number of other commun-
ities. NEOSO failed to get any bids for its member
communities this year. UH
is fortunate
that the Service Director bought as much as he could during the
summer on the
old contract but now we get to pay a much higher dollar
through
ODOT to
supplement what was bought early on. While we all want to work in
a
collaborative way with other communities
and to move forward on regional efforts,
this perhaps helps us see that they do
not work ALL of the time In late 2007,
Council approved the construction of a salt storage dome on Taylor for
the
city.
The new Council in early 2008 put
a stop to that and insisted that we work collabor-
atively with Cleveland Heights
and pay to store salt in their facility on Noble Rd.
That means UH was limited in the amount that could be purchased
at the old (a lot
LESS costly price) during the summer. In this case, the rush
to collaborate, both
in NEOSO and with CH will cost the city substantially more for
salt
and put our
safety at risk as we travel the unsalted side streets.
And speaking of NEOSO…
NEOSO Efficiency
contract - efficient spending of our
tax dollars? Perhaps
you have been
following the latest in efficiency studies by Council in the Sun
Press.
If not, here is a brief recap. Apparently, in April or May of last
year one
of the
Councilmen started talking with the head of NEOSO about the
possibility
of sub-
contracting out city services in hopes of generating lower
costs. These talks
continued resulting in the
council asking for and getting a proposal in July from
NEOSO. A resolution was introduced in December to award
NEOSO a contract
for $25,000 to do an efficiency study of the city departments.
This then is about 6
to 7 months after
Council began to consider doing this. According to the story
and
published letters, there are other firms that
also do this type of analysis. The
Council
never even attempted to get bids from those firms. (They call this
going out for RFPs,
Request
for Proposals) Certainly, Council could have attempted to get
other bids for
this work even in August or September. Why is this an
issue? NEOSO has NEVER
done this type of study
before. At the last minute in December,
two other bids were
obtained. One of
them came in from an organization that routinely does these
types
of studies
for cities and has done them for years.
Their price was also $ 25,000.
The second organization would also have given a more extensive
work
product than
NEOSO has bid to do. The
Council was to hear about the other two proposals at the
Council of the Whole
meeting on January 6th.
However, only 2 councilpersons were
on time and heard the whole
presentation. Two others came in approximately
half way
through. 3 never
attended. One certainly can questions
just how seriously the other
proposals were discussed. Here we have a Council that has
portrayed
themselves as
wanting to do things in a business like manner with efficiency
and they go and give a
substantial dollar bid to a company that has no
experience in what they want them to do.
This might be funny but it is our
$25,000 of tax money that
they are
spending. That
makes one wonder why
this firm only? Do they already know
what they want and are
willing to plop down the dollars to get their result in
writing? Even more curious is that
the
Charter Review Commission has been extensively interviewing all of
the
depart-
ment heads about what they do and how they do it. Maybe the
Council should have
considered having the CRC write up their observations – it would have been lots
cheaper.
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