Borough delays award of dispatch contract

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough has postponed plans to award a nearly $1 million contract to dispatch emergency responders.

The contract, like it has every year the borough has needed emergency dispatch since as far back as the 1970s, was set to go to the city of Palmer. The city was the low bidder and scored better than the city of Wasilla in the borough’s bid process. The winning bid was for $943,046 for one year of service.

“An assembly memorandum will be presented by borough administration to Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly on April 1, 2014, recommending contract award,” a letter from the borough’s purchasing officer to the city reads.

But then the borough rescinded that notice.

“The borough is retracting the notice of successful proposal issued on March 12,” reads a letter dated March 19.

All of this came up at the Palmer City Council meeting Tuesday night.

“We feel that something seems to be a little amiss here,” Palmer City Manager Doug Griffin is heard telling the council in a recording of that meeting. “At the end of the day, we felt that we won the bid fair and square.”

Griffin told the council the city submitted two bids. The first was to maintain the current contract. Palmer Director of Emergency Services Jon Owen said that contract was identical to the current contract, down to the dollar.

But the second contract included some add-ons the borough had asked for, including taking over maintenance of the computer-aided dispatching system in place at the dispatch center. Currently, the borough maintains the system, but the city runs the dispatch center.

“We lost sleep on this,” Owen said of the city’s discussions about what to do about that increase.

But it’s that increase, according to borough administration, that provoked this change in direction.

“This absolutely should not be viewed as anything negative at all about their ability to perform in the future or their current service. They are outstanding. I’m just running into some huge financial challenges,” borough manager John Moosey said.

Those challenges are largely outside of his control. The state is talking about cutting back on revenue sharing, which would mean fewer dollars for the borough. The state also is talking about requiring a larger contribution from local governments into the Public Employees Retirement System.

Specifically, in the borough’s emergency services department, a state auditor has demanded that responders who work more than 40 hours be eligible for state retirement, a change that has made the borough rethink the way manages staffing, and which will wind up costing the borough more money this budget season.

What all these changes seem to have in common is that they’re the result of decisions made outside of the borough, Moosey said. The decision on a dispatch contract, by contrast, is one the borough can make for itself.

“This is one of them where we can kind of make a decision right now to hold off on that cost increase,” Moosey said.

So, he said, he made the decision to pull back the bid award and re-bid the contract. He said he plans to ask Palmer for a six-month extension of the current contract. The recordings of the Tuesday city council meeting include the council seemingly directing administrators to seek a longer contract — maybe for a year, rather than six months.

“The city needs fiscal certainty,” Owen told the council. “I have people who work in that unit who need fiscal certainty.”

Moosey said that the next bid process will take a look at all of the elements of the bid package and consider possibly not asking for the add-ons the borough sought this time around.

Owen’s discussion Tuesday included an outline of what it could mean for the city to lose the contract. If the city decided to eliminate dispatchers as a category of employees it would be liable for $2.7 million in pension obligations spread across the next 20 years. The alternative would be to continue dispatching Palmer police and fire departments and maybe the Houston Fire Department. The staff would shrink from 12 to six and the city’s budget would increase $159,000 per year.

“This is indeed a very serious thing,” Owen said.

But, city councilman Richard Best said, if the borough wants more bids, so be it.

“I relish the opportunity to bid against the city of Wasilla again,” he said at the Tuesday meeting.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.