WHY PAY OUTSIDERS MORE FOR GOODS AVAILABLE HERE?

By Juan Montoya
In what has become a bad habit by local entities, the City of Brownsville Police Department will ask the commissioners this Tuesday to allow them to bypass competitive bidding and purchase 26 surveillance cameras plus maintenance from a Harlingen-based vendor at a cost of  $172,154.20.
That will cost the city approximately $80,000 more than a proposal made to the city by a local company earlier this year.
The item is numbered 17 in Tuesday's meeting at the request of PD Chief Orlando Rodriguez.
According to a letter with the item request from the PD from Commander of Fiscal Management James Paschall, the department will use a vendor on a list approved by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) that frees the city from using competitive bidding when purchasing goods and services.
As a result, some local suppliers say that the city is willing to pay exorbitant prices for the surveillance equipment when it already had in hand much lower prices for the identical equipment that will be provided by the GSA-approved vendor from the Harlingen-based company.
In a letter dated Nov. 19, Pashcall asks the commissioners to approve the purchase through the GSA contract pricing system rather than to go  out for bids.
"I am requesting an agenda item for December 10, 2013 Commission meeting for this GSA contract pricing purchase from Total Protection Systems Inc. located in Corpus Christi, Texas," Paschall wrote.
"The company has area offices located in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Harlingen," he wrote."The Brownsville Police Department currently has a Milestone security camera system covering the main station. We solicited proposals from vendors that could upgrade the current equipment, add 26 additional cameras, as well as provide a maintenance contract for the current system valued at $172,154.20.
The camera system the city has provides security of police department operations and also includes monitoring of inmates housed at the City Jail.
"With such a substantial investment in our current system, it was imperative that we work with a company that was an authorized vendor for the Milestone equipment and software," Paschall wrote.
"The total cost for this purchase is $172,783.92 and funding for this requisition will be through federal forfeiture funds," he wrote.
We have outlined the disturbing trend in the city going to outside vendors – and at times choosing to perform the services in-house – rather than to award the contract to local suppliers. In fact, the Milestone surveillance equipment that the city mentions was installed and maintained by American Surveillance of Brownsville.
The same thing occurred with the provision of security for city facilities when city commissioners 2 led by commissioners Jessica Tetrea-Kalifa and Estela Chavez-Vasquez chose to reject the low bid of Brownsville-based American Surveillance and instead incurred the costs in-house that will cost the city many thousands of dollars more.
In the past we have posted here how the city commissioners turned down a proposal by American Surveillance to continue providing the security services when its contract expired. When we asked the city, we got this response:
"The American Surveillance Security Services contract with American Surveillance had expired.
Various bids for the services were received, including American Surveillance, but no one was awarded a security services contract as the commission decided (via duly made motion) that security services be done “in-house” via Brownsville Police Department."

A cursory review of the bid tabulations and staff recommendations reveals that American Surveillance was the Level 1 Primary vendor for 10 of the 12 categories listed. The closest competitor was Border Protective Security, of Indian Lake. Even then, the differences were small, just 37 cents per hour in the armed emergency responses component in item 11, and 52 cents per hour in the unarmed emergency response component in item 12.
In fact, in light of the city administration's reduction of hours for security of the municipal facilities, invoice records show that American Surveillance's billing was less than $600,000 per year, a far cry from the $800,000 the city was paying when the company first took over the contract. A review of the bids for the 2013 contract that was tabled indicated that America Surveillance had actually lowered the annual costs by some $40,000 more for the term beginning this year.

One would think that given American Surveillance's competitive rates in the 10 items categorized by the city, the fact that it had lowered hourly costs per year, was the lowest bidder, and it being a Brownsville-based company would make it a shoo-in for the contract.  

But something went awry.
Instead of picking the low bid and awarding the contract to the company, the item – upon motion by Tetreau seconded by Vasquez – was tabled.
In the minutes of that meeting, the commissioners moved instead to provide the security to the 20-odd city facilities in-house. That means that city employees or students at the police academy, will be providing the security. No one knows exactly what cost will be borne by the city – health insurance, liability, clothing allowance, etc. – but when commissioner Ricardo Longoria inquired as to availability of funds for said services, Pete Gonzalez, Deputy City Manager, responded that the project was approved by city management and funds were allocated to each department where security services would be required.
(A public information request for the actual costs made through the office of the Brownsville City Secretary's Office was ignored. We will be submitting a protest for the city ignoring the request and will seek help from the Texas Attorney General's Office on the matter.)
Now, from this vantage point, it appears that the purchasing process was followed by both the city and the vendors in this case. So why did the city decide to shoulder the additional load of providing security in-house after it had put out the services for bids?
We know there has been bad blood between some city commissioners and the owners of American Surveillance – commissioner Tetreau is one – over a previous controversy where she claimed that one of their operatives helped her former opponent Charlie Atkinson install surveillance cameras to prove she did not reside in the district for which she was running.

If the city merely matches the cost that a private security company charges a year ( $821,271 in 2010), that is yet another hit on the city budget. Remember, that figure does not take into consideration the other start-up costs associated with using in-house personnel like equipment such as cars, four-wheeled vehicles health care, retirement, FICA, insurance, supervisory salaries, etc.
It will easily top $1 million per year that the taxpayers of the city will have to bear.
How can this (cutting off your nose to spite your face) make any sense to our administration and city commission? 

Now, with the local company's offer costing some $80,000 less for the identical equipment, how can anyone justify going out of town when we have local people who can provide the same service and the funds stay here?