Common Council to Vote on Public Safety Computer System Thursday

In a special meeting to be held Thursday at 7 PM in Council Chambers, the Common Council will vote on a bonding ordinance for the purchase of hardware and software for the police department and for police, fire and ambulance dispatch.  The total cost of the hardware and software is nearly $1.5 million.

The bond proposal comes four years after the city bonded $400,000 for a similar system, which by all reports, is disfunctional.  The city is still paying on that bond.

Middletown's IT (Information Technology) Director, Bill Oliver proposed the purchases after he, and a designated committee studied the offerings of up to five vendors.  The selection committee narrowed the search down to two companies and solicited requests for bids.  The names of those companies, and the estimated bids have not been made public.


ADDENDUM: The names of the software companies were provided at 2:30 PM today by Bill Oliver.  They are Global Software of Oklahoma and Visionair of North Carolina.

The purchase of the "software suite" and "infrastructure upgrades" has been separated into two purchasing agreements of $745,000 each.  By ordinance, any purchases under $750,000 may be approved by vote of the Common Council after a public hearing.  However, the ordinance reads that if "if the total (editor's emphasis) estimated cost of any improvement for which such obligations are proposed to be issued exceeds $750,000" the bonded proposal should be submitted for approval in a public referendum vote.

There appears to be universal, and bipartisan agreement that the new computer system is essential for the efficient operation of police and fire departments, although there has been no public declaration that the current 4-year old system is a failure.

"We're keeping it running," Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said Thursday.  "But it's taking as much effort just to keep it running as it would be to do it manually."

Councilman David Bauer has suggested that the two purchases on the brink of statuatory requirement for referendum appears to be "suspiciously convenient."

"David would like almost everything to go to referendum and be out in the public," Giuliano said.  "And those are good ideals to live by, but sometimes it's not that easy.

"If a purchase number is close to the threshold, I'm going to say, 'get it under the threshold,' because I don't want to spend the $30,000 on a referendum," Giuliano said.  "And it's something we absolutely have to do.  I don't want to put it out to the public and have them say no when it's something we really need to do."

The city is not required to bond, or borrow, for this purchase, which could be made using money from the general fund, but the mayor is reluctant to dip into that fund when it has been tapped recently "filling holes in budgets," because of an underfunded city budget.

Giuliano said that he instructed Oliver to find a system that would work for the city, and would be easily integrated into other municipal systems.

The public is welcome to comment on the bonding issue at Thursday's meeting.