Daily Archives: September 21, 2007

City Council, City of Peoria

City recommends keeping Fleet Management in house

City Manager Randy Oliver has been looking for ways to save the city money, much to the chagrin of some council members. He suggested outsourcing the city’s Fleet Management services — the mechanics who maintain and repair the city’s many and various vehicles, like fire engines and snow plows. This caused several council members to balk. It also made for a very stressful situation for the mechanics whose jobs were on the line and their families.

That may be coming to an end Tuesday night. The City Manager is recommending that Fleet Management be kept in-house. The reason? It’s not worth the money that would be saved by outsourcing (emphasis mine below):

Cities contract out services generally to reduce costs and/or improve services. Seeking proposals serves as a measure to compare costs between in-house and private service delivery. While a change in service delivery may be justifiable on the basis of any cost savings, as a practical matter, however, the cost savings should be sufficient to justify the organizational change.

The proposals from Penske Trucking and First Vehicle Services are both excellent proposals and would exceed all the City’s fleet maintenance requirements and provide a higher level of service. Based on the financial analysis, however, the improved services do not justify the additional cost in dollars and the organizational disruption caused by changing to a private contractor.

Thus, the recommendation is to reject all bids and keep things in-house. I can’t help but think that this could have gone either way, and what tipped it toward staying in-house was at least partially influenced by all the push-back from certain council members. Nevertheless, I’m glad to see the mechanics won’t be losing their jobs (assuming the council approves this action, which I have no doubt they will) and this will maybe cause considering some alternative ways to use vehicles, like marketing and advertising (somebody, call Fleet Wrap HQ, it’s finally the time!).

Peoria Police

HOI follows up on camera question

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Kudos to HOI News for asking the Peoria Police Department about the effectiveness of their surveillance cameras. I was pleased to see they got reaction from Officer Ann Ruggles, the police department’s spokesperson. I e-mailed Ofc. Ruggles with my questions about the cameras Thursday morning and have yet to receive a reply.

They also got statistics on the number of police calls there have been to the two camera locations from 2004 to present. It looks to me like the number of calls dipped initially, but is now rising again. Perhaps the old saying is true: “Familiarity breeds contempt.”

Peoria Civic Center

Another new scoreboard? So soon?

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ScoreboardBeginning Monday, workers will start assembling and then installing a new video scoreboard that Bruce Ashley promises will be a crowd-pleaser.

”It’s going to reach out and grab them,” says the Civic Center’s operations director.

The $850,000 scoreboard by TransLux Corp. will hang in the center of the arena, as the current one does, but it will have four sides of high-resolution, full-color video, capable of showing live shots.

That was written by Jenni Davis and appeared in the Journal Star just five years ago, on August 20, 2002. What’s in the Civic Center budget for FY2008? A new scoreboard to the tune of $700,000.

Why? Does an $850,000 scoreboard only have a lifespan of 5-6 years? Is it even paid off yet? I notice one of the entries on the Statement of Cash Flows is “Long Term Liabilities,” which includes “principal amount of scoreboard debt, land acquisition debt, and club room / suites debt.” And according to their financial statement from 2004, “The Peoria Civic Center has a note payable with final payment due November 2007 for the scoreboard purchase.”

In looking up information on the Civic Center scoreboard, I found pretty wide-ranging opinions. Bradley’s website praises it in this statement from 4/21/2007: “In recent years, the arena has undergone some major renovations benefiting Bradley Basketball. A multi-million dollar scoreboard with a four-sided jumbo video panel was hung in 2002 and the Braves are playing on a court that is only three years old.” They obviously exaggerated the price, but seem to be happy with it nonetheless.

On the other hand, the Rivermen hate it. The Rivermen Fan Advisory Board had this stinging criticism in January 2007: “The video scoreboard quality is very poor, and the images and voice are out of sync. (The Civic Center is looking at the possibility of purchasing a rear-projection system.)” In fact, their dissatisfaction goes back at least until July 2006. That was less than four years after the $850,000 scoreboard was installed.

If the scoreboard is that terrible, then I think it’s fair to ask why the Civic Center spent so much money on such a poor product. That’s a lot of money to flush down the toilet. Also, what steps are being taken to make a better purchase this time?

It’s probably just coincidental, but I did happen to discover that former Rivermen Vice President of Sales/Marketing Mike Nelson, who worked for the Rivermen in 2003, “served two years as the Midwestern Regional Manager for the Trans-Lux Scoreboard Co.” before he worked for the Rivermen. The current scoreboard was purchased from Trans-Lux.

Update: Some commentators over at the Peoria Pundit are saying the Civic Center purchased the scoreboard used and got it for a bargain. I have no way of verifying that information at this time. But if they did, then I would have to assume the “new” $7 million scoreboard they want to get is used, too. And is this really better than buying new and getting more life out of the scoreboard? Is buying a used scoreboard more analogous to buying a used car or a used computer?