Xerox Beats Ikon

Over objections about a rigged process process, and the heavy lobbying of a local printing company, Xerox walked away Thursday night with a lucrative five-year contact to handle all the city’s photocopying.

By a vote of 18 to 7, the Board of Aldermen voted to approve the contract with Xerox for the managing of all the city and the Board of Education’s copying needs. City Purchasing Agent Mike Fumiatti said the deal will save the city $300,000 per year.

The deal marks the first time in 15 years that Ikon printing will not have the copying contract with the city. The company did not go down quietly.

At a public hearing at the September meeting of the Finance Committee, representatives of Ikon and other local copying companies lambasted what they described as a bait and switch. 

The city had initially put out a request for proposals (RFP) for a one-year contract with four one-year renewals. Then the city’s corporation counsel ordered it changed it to a five-year contract—since, as opponents pointed out, the original RFP was simply circumventing the need for approval for a multi-year contract by pretending it wasn’t a multi-year contract.

Xerox was selected as the preferred bidder. Xerox’s winning bid came in at $68,878.65 per month, a little over $1,000 cheaper than the next lowest bid.

The other companies called the deal unfair. If they’d known from the start that they were bidding on a true five-year contract, they would have submitted different bids, they said.

In between that original committee meeting and Thursday evening, both Ikon and Xerox lobbied aldermen to get them on their side of the conflict. In the end, Xerox won out.

The debate over the deal Thursday began before the full board meeting, at a public information session where aldermen had pointed questions for Fumiatti and Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden.

Dwight Alderman Greg Smith asked why the contract was now being presented as a 5-year deal, when it had been presented in the original RFP as a one-year deal with four renewals.

“It had a five-year obligation,” Bolden said. Everyone who bid on the deal knew that, he said.

The only way it wouldn’t have been renewed for the full five years, according to the wording of the contract, was if the Board of Aldermen for some reason ceased to put any money for copies into the city budget, Fumiatti said. That’s not going to happen, he said. 

As the public information session broke up, East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker approached Fumiatti for more information. Fumiatti said the RFP had originally been for a one-year contract because it would have been approved faster. A one-year contract would not have needed aldermanic approval.

In the aldermanic chamber, representatives from Xerox and Ikon settled into the last row of the gallery. The people from Xerox said they couldn’t talk to the press without permission. Richard Sloan from Ikon talked. He acknowledged that his company had been lobbying the aldermen. 

“So have they,” Sloan (pictured, in the back) said, referring to Xerox. “That’s the nature of the beast.”

“In this climate we need to save every dime that we possibly can,” said West River Alderman Yusuf Shah, the chair of the Finance Committee, as he introduced the deal for a vote. He sought to head off criticisms of the way the bid was selected: “It’s disingenuous for to say the system is broken when they don’t get what they want.”

“I feel very torn on this,” said Alderman Elicker. Xerox seems to be the right choice, but it’s also important that the process is a fair one, he said. He said he couldn’t support the deal. 

Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro rose and unleashed a prepared jeremiad. She called the deal “not in the best interests of the taxpayers.” And it’s unfair, she said. “You can’t change the rules in the middle. ... What’s wrong is wrong.”

West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson said he was also torn. “Obviously mistakes were made” with the process, he said. “Somebody in the administration tried to get slick” and pass off a five-year contract as a one-year deal that would never have come before the Board of Aldermen, Goldson said.

Then he threw a curveball that temporarily derailed the whole debate.

The Yoots

Fulfilling a campaign process from his recently failed reelection bid, Goldson introduced an amendment: “The Board of Aldermen strongly urges the city administration to increase the summer youth employment program by an amount equal or greater to the amount save by this contract.”

Goldson described the amendment as “very non-binding.”

“It’s just to gauge if this board is supportive of funding youth employment,” Goldson said.

Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks said she thought “the intent is a good one,” but failed to understand what the point of it is, as a non-binding resolution. 

“It lets the administration know what the board’s pleasure is,” Goldson said. 

“I just don’t see why we’d attach it to any particular” piece of legislation, she said. 

“My intention is to attach it to every item while I’m still on the board,” Goldson said.

Jackson-Brooks made a motion to send the amendment to committee and vote on the original copy deal without it.

Goldson opposed that idea. “The last item I submitted was in committee for 20 months,” he said. “It wouldn’t see the light of day while I’m still on the board.”

“This doesn’t need a hearing,” he said. “If you don’t support summer youth employment, then fine, vote to bury it in committee. Vote to kill it.”

Jackson-Brooks’ motion passed 22 to 3, with Aldermen Michael Smart and Mike Jones siding with Goldson.

The Xerox contract then passed un-amended, by a vote of 18 to 7.

 

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