By Gerald LaVaute, Heritage Media
The city of Milan will spend more than $24,000 on new equipment. The City Council approved the purchases last week.
A Konica Minolta Bizhub will be used in the administrative offices and replaces a 10-year-old machine that had stopped operating when a networking board failed in October. City officials said the part couldn't be replaced.
The purchase of a new copier was included in the current budget, as well as a separate new scanning machine and folding machine to fold tax and utility bills before they're mailed.
The new machine, which costs $15,441, includes copying, scanning, faxing and folding functions and, among other efficiencies, makes the process of printing and folding tax and utility bills a single step performed by the machine, instead of two steps on separate machines.
The machine that was approved for purchase was the second-lowest price of four bids. City staff tested the alternatives at least a week to demonstrate their usefulness for office tasks.
The lowest-price machine, a Ricoh at $11,920, was not available for use by city staff. It didn't include the folding function.
"Overwhelmingly, the Konica Minolta machine was chosen as the best machine in terms of ease of use, quality of copies and production capacity," said City Administrator Ben Swayze.
Swayze added the scanner in the new machine will help in an ongoing effort to reduce paper usage.
The monthly per-copy maintenance fee is estimated to be $195, Swayze said, in line with current expense.
In a separate action in a council meeting this month, officials approved the purchase of a new office machine for the police department at a cost of $8,876
The initial plan had been to transfer the current copier at City Hall to the police department, but its failure caused city officials to consider the purchase of a new machine.
Unlike the machine for city administrative staff, this purchase was not budgeted.
Swayze said that it looked as if spending efficiencies in the police department might offset the cost of its new copier.
Failing that, he said that he would transfer money from the 9-1-1 budget to cover dispatching costs, freeing up adequate funding in the police budget for the new copier.
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