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Millions spent are unseen by Mesa City Council by Gary Nelson - Dec. 2, 2011 07:37 AM The Republic | azcentral.com The agenda for Monday's meeting calls on the Mesa City Council to approve spending $47,103.56 for fire-hydrant water meters. Nothing unusual about that. Every regular-meeting agenda has a list of stuff the city needs to buy and the council must by law approve. But while council members must review every purchase and capital-improvement project costing $25,000 or more, the city spends millions of dollars on contracts that the council never considers. Alex Finter, chairman of the council's Audit, Finance and Enterprise Committee, wants to change that. Purchasing Director Ed Quedens told Finter's committee Thursday that while numerous contracts aren't subject to council review that checks and balances still exist. Contract procurements are governed by state law, Mesa's charter and ordinances, internal management policies and other rules, Quedens said. Competitive processes are required for general services costing $25,000 or more, and recommended for professional services costing at least $50,000, Quedens said. All such contracts must be approved by the city manager. Some services are exempt from that competitive process, however. Notable in that category are attorneys, to whom Mesa often turns for outside help in handling lawsuits and other complex matters. At the request of some council members, Trisha Sorensen, an assistant to City Manager Chris Brady, recently compiled a list of contracts that had been awarded without council scrutiny. It includes relatively small items, such as $15,548 for linen rental by the parks department, and big ones, such as several contracts totaling nearly $3.7 million for temporary workers hired through the Human Resources Department. Even so, Finter's committee was told Thursday that the City Council signs off on the vast majority of Mesa's spending. So far this year, the council has approved more than $119 million in purchases and capital projects. Contracts requiring only administrative approval have totaled about $20 million. Finter, however, would like for the contracting process to become more public. Thursday morning, his committee recommended on a 2-1 vote that the City Council ask staff to draft an ordinance requiring council review of all spending over a certain dollar amount. "I'm looking for every opportunity to add more transparency to the process, more check and balance to the system," Finter said. Finter's motion would still exempt some professional services, such as lawyers and engineers, from council review. Councilwoman Dina Higgins supported Finter's motion, but council member Scott Somers disagreed, saying that there may be other ways to provide transparency short of a new ordinance. City Manager Chris Brady told the committee that the city is improving his procurement processes and that requiring council review of all spending would slow down the system and create more work for staff members. "It would not be my recommendation," Brady said. Mayor Scott Smith told the Republic in an interview that opening some contracts for council review could create problems. "I would not support a change to the way things are done now," Smith said, adding that he "would like to see some sort of formal procedure that lets us know what's going on in the service area." "We need to give professional staff some deference," Smith said. "When you open up service contracts (for council review) it could bring blatant politics into the issue. If you want to see what it would be like if the City Council were involved in every service contract, look at the towing contract." Disputes over how Mesa awards the contracts for police-generated towing calls have roiled the city for years, leading to contentious council meetings, back-door politicking, lawsuits and, now, yet another attempt to create a fair system for evaluating bids. Research by Finter's assistant, Ian Linssen, indicates that Mesa's original 1967 charter required council approval for all expenditures more than $10,000, no matter the classification. In 1976 voters approved an amendment limiting that requirement to tangible property and insurance. The dollar limit was raised to $25,000 in a 2004 amendment. "The current process has the potential to enable significant negative consequences, including a lack of council oversight, lack of transparency and diminished public trust," Linssen wrote in a memo to Finter. Linssen also found that several Valley cities, including Tempe, Chandler and Gilbert, require council approval of contracts for more than $50,000. Phoenix's council must sign off on contracts for such things as janitors, outside telephone services and marketing. Finter's concerns about professional services contracts surfaced publicly about a year ago when City Auditor Jennifer Ruttman found several problems in Mesa's procurement process as it relates to the kinds of purchases the council is supposed to review. Legal bills The Mesa city attorney's office often turns to outside counsel for help with complex development cases and lawsuits. The City Council does not review these and numerous other professional-services contracts. A city document provided the following examples for fiscal 2010-11 , which ended June 30: Gust Rosenfeld law firm: $42,000 for its work on the development agreement for the Crescent Crown beverage distributing plant now under construction on West Broadway Road. Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck LLP: $71,000 for legal work related to the First Solar Inc. plant being built in southeast Mesa. Protracted negotiations with the Chicago Cubs for their new stadium: $46,000 from Rose Law Group and $107,000 from the law firm of Mariscal, Weeks, McIntyre & Friedlander. Mariscal Weeks also defended Mesa in several other cases. A suit filed by the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona over development impact fees: $18,000. A suit filed by Thompson Diversified in a dispute over Mesa's towing contract: $20,000. A suit filed by Ryan and Laeticia Coleman over the city's refusal to issue them a tattoo parlor license: $57,000. Mesa spent more than $500,000 for outside legal counsel last fiscal year. About $330,000 of that comes from the general fund and the rest is charged to the accounts of departments on behalf of whom the lawyers are hired. |