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CC MTG MINUTES JANUARY 13 2014 WORKSHOP MEETING OF THE AGAWAM CITY COUNCIL r The following are the minutes from the: Agawam City Council Workshop Meeting Monday,January 13,2014 at 7:00pm Dining Room—Agawam Senior Center 954 Main Street Agawam, MA. 01001 The meeting was attended by all eleven of the city councilors with Councilor Bitzas arriving at 7:45pm. Also in attendance were Chris Golba, Director of DPW, Auditor • Cheryl St. John, Vince Gioscia and Will Reichelt from the Law Department, City Engineer Michelle Chase and School Department's Rob Clickstein. The meeting was called to order at 7:04pm. This meeting is a Workshop of the Council to discuss (1)the creation of the CPO position and (2) the union transfers. (1) Creation of Chief Procurement Officer Chris Johnson stated that the Council was being asked to create a department by ordinance with the compensation being mid-$50,000 to low$60,000. Where would this salary come from? Gina wanted to know if the CPO would work on behalf of the school department and the town and if so, would the school department be responsible for half the salary? Would the Mayor be hiring someone with experience? Would this be a full time position or not? Gina stated that it would have been extremely helpful if the Mayor had attended • the meeting and/or School Department. According to the letters of recommendation included with the packet, it appears the the town had asked the Inspector General's office if the CPO position was necessary and they declined to respond. Chris stated that back when he was in office and Chapter 30b was enacted,the Mayor was • designated as the town's CPO, so is it really necessary to create this position?. Gina also stated that there seem to be quite a few questions that need to be answered prior to making a decision. Chris suggested creating a list of questions in a memo to the Mayor. List of questions to be submitted to the Mayor from Chris and Gina: • 1. Is the CPO expected to have prior experience and if so, how much? 2. Previously certified? 3. CPO responsible for both the School Department and townside procurement? 4. What level of procurement is this position dealing with? i 5. How has it been done in the past? 6. Would this position be full time or part time? 7. Would the CPO oversee all departments? S. Part of the salary is defined in the backup information but not all, what is the full amount and from where in the budget will it come (line items)? • 9. The salary is from the Water Department and Sewer Department, is this annually or just the initial salary? 10. Last fiscal year, what items would be necessary to use a CPO on the town side and school side? 11. What would the CPO department be comprised of? Would there be clerical assistance? 12. Where would the physical office be located? Chris Golba talked about the salary coming from his department. He currently has a fund in DPW from where this would come. He averages a minimum of 35-40 contracts. The • department heads would write the contracts and give to a CPO who would do the remainder of the process and submit back to the department head. Up to now the process has been haphazard. Cheryl said the training is renewable. The state bidding system site needs a CPO. Cheryl also stated that Munis has a module for bids and the she would love to have electronic submissions of RFPs and IFBs with Munis. Cheryl said there are four i chapters of laws regarding procurement and it is too overwhelming for each department head as well as herself to stay up to date. She is very pro-centralizing this. She feels there are a lot of re-do after the fact and it would be very beneficial for the town. Rob Clickstein stated he doesn't have a lot of contract language expertise for some of the contracts. The old system has triplicate purchase orders. A CPO could oversee the entire process and follow the laws, etc. Vince stated that some of the projects - design service for the park, materials, out of district school tuitions (30b exempt) and technically the town is not supposed to do an RFP without a CPO within the town. Gina stated that reorganization could solve this issue. Bob Rossi stated that we need some internal controls and that no system will work without oversight and there currently is none. Gina asked if Cheryl could get certified to do this and Cheryl stated she's not sure if she was qualified to become certified. She's knows the basic laws and that's it. Gina inquired if we currently weren't taking advantage of bulk discounts and Cheryl stated that departments are each doing their own thing. Wasn't that why the building was redone a few years back to store all the bulk ordered items? Rob Clickstein mentioned that he felt we were not using our purchase power and that we need someone to pull it all together. Chris said that a majority of the procurement falls well beneath the formal bid process and that there is a$2,500 minimum requirement. Dennis summed it up as they are looking for a purchasing agent for contracts, centralizing, best practices, to organize and reduce costs with respect to purchasing and Vince said a CPO would save a lot of time. Dennis suggested that if this was an appointed position, then the department heads would be getting the same salaries but doing less work. Didn't make sense. Bob Rossi questioned why we wouldn't just take part of the salary from the department head's salaries if they were no longer going to do that part of their job. Gina wondered if a grant writer could be combined with this position of CPO (Chris suggested it mentioned that on Page 2 of the first paragraph of the information supplied by the Mayor). Rob Clickstein stated that he would still have the same responsibility that he always has had but he would be relieved of doing the contracts requiring more knowledge of the 30(b) regulations. Regarding the RFPs and 1FPs, he stated he is able to write the specs but cannot do both and was looking for oversight and assistant in that regard. Chris mentioned that the CPO would be a guider of the process but that anything less than $25,000 would not have a formal procurement. Most of the major procurement issues such as sewer, etc, would have consultants like Tighe & Bond handling those issues. He understands Mr. Clickstein to be saying he needs help with the formal bid package, for proposal process package, advertising and the like. The larger communities have CDBG grants and require a more formal process. This ordinance says to create a department. Seems like the immediate work says one person but a department mean more hires. There are so many questions and concerns. It was decided that a list of questions would be compiled and sent to the Mayor. (2) Union transfers Chris Johnson stated that during our budget process, we as a Council, voted to set a 1 %2% and now the Council is being asked to approve a 2%which causes$122,000 more to come out of the Operating Budget. Why would we bother to make this cut unless we are willing to stand by it? The Mayor said the heck with you and did what he wanted anyway. Councilor Rheault said he is on a fixed income and gets 1%but Agawam doesn't. Dennis Perry stated he has not received a raise for the last eight years in his job. Chris Johnson stated that there is one union contract missing from the seven that were submitted(health union). He mentioned that it is really fundamental —this is our job as a Council, we are the appropriating authority. We set a rate back in the budget process and the Mayor ignore it. Dennis Perry mentioned that all we were doing back in the budget hearing was to keep the tax rate the same. We tried to take $50,000 out of reserves, $100,000 from the town side and $200,000 from the school side however we ended up cutting only the town side and not the school side. The Mayor says by this that he doesn't care what we say and he will take the extra out of reserves. Chris Johnson says with the information received regarding the snow budget, that that budget is already nearly exhausted and we will most likely have to borrow from reserves for snow removal but the reserve fund will already be reduced by these contracts as well as the contract not yet signed for the nurses' union. Dennis said let's send this back to the bargaining table and say no or by agreeing to this, we are saying just do whatever you want. It's not like the Mayor was not aware of this. Councilor Calabrese said she thought it was intentional to do this. Chris Johnson mentioned that nobody in the town is hurting for a salary. No one is underpaid in this town. When the Health Department union is settled, there will be $700,000 to $800,000 over a three year period. The point is we authorized what%he should negotiate and the Mayor ignored us. That's the point. Anthony Suffriti stated that the Fire Department will be re-negotiating contracts to meet new national standards not the state standards so the Fire Department union will have to re-negotiate at some point anyway. Chris Johnson said that we get an item of agenda with absolutely no supporting information and/or we get it last minute right before a meeting when we have no time to review that information. i George Bitzas said what's the point of doing this? What's the point of making this statement? What message are we trying to send? They will just have a lawsuit. It was mentioned that the Council decided for the town as to what to appropriate and the Mayor chose not to follow that. To approve this item as is essentially says it doesn't matter what the Council says or does, you the Mayor can do whatever you want. We the Council should send it back and say if you negotiate 1.5%, then we will approve it. Gina Letellier stated that we approved a salary reserve amount which has a 1.5% in reserve and the Mayor knew this. He knew exactly what he was doing and didn't care what we the Council said. He could have even negotiated a 1.5%, 1.5%, 2.0% for a three year contract but he didn't. We need a salary survey done. Even look at the new Chief of Police position, it is understood that the new chief was hired on the same pay scale as Chief Campbell but on the bottom step with the salary range right now $101,000 - $122,000. Stipends were also brought up. Stipends should not be included in a salary. Does it get included towards retirement? Paid in lump sum? Paid in monthly installments? These were discussed with the Auditor and current regulations with the DOR. Chris Johnson had some housekeeping matters. The sub-committee assignments will-stay as is with Councilor Suffriti replacing Councilor Magovem. Gina would love to be on the School Budget sub-committee if someone wants to switch. A general Council workshop will be scheduled for the beginning of February with these topics in mind: • Goal setting • Boardpaq • Verbatim minutes The workshop was adjourned at 8:17pm. Respectfully submitted, Christopher C. Johnson President • cc: Full Council, Mayor, Solicitor i f