By rejecting a no-bid contract recommended in April by Peachtree City Manager Jim Pennington, the city saved $260,000 over a three-year period for additional information technology services.
Thursday night the Peachtree City Council approved a proposal from the Presidio technology firm for a three-year price of $404,840, some $260,296 less than the initial no-bid contract with tech firm VC3 proposed back in April by Pennington.
The Citizen ran a story detailing the recommended no-bid expenditure, and the resulting public outcry led council to seek proposals from a number of companies to make sure it was getting the best price for the service.
VC3 also submitted a new proposal for the work that was considered alongside the Presidio proposal, but at a cost of $1.37 million for three years. The difference between the proposals is that VC3 would have had two IT staffers on site all the time, but Presidio will have them available on an on-call basis.
Presidio will also be monitoring the city’s servers and network remotely and in some cases will be able to fix problems before they are noticed by the city, officials noted.
The city will retain its two remaining IT staff members but will use savings from the vacancies of the other two staffers to pay for the Presidio contract, officials have said. The city IT employees will handle some after-hours support needs, attach new equipment to the network, provide application software support and other duties.
The city sought the IT services contract based on the departure of former IT director Matt Robinson, who was lauded for his technical prowess and actually wrote more than 20 different programs to help save the city money.
The city also was operating on the premise put forth in a technology assessment by VC3 last year which said 10 of the city’s 17 servers were “ready to crash,” Pennington has said previously.
The city received three proposals for the IT services based on the specifications of the new computers system currently being installed by VC3. The third company’s proposal was removed from consideration after a technology consulting firm determined it wasn’t what the city was looking for.
Furthermore, VC3’s solution for the IT staffing, while robust from a staffing perspective, was “not as competitively priced,” according to the third-party evaluators who provided recommendations to council.
The city has the flexibility to get out of the Presidio contract, should the need arise, with a 60-day notice to Presidio.
In the meantime, VC3 is in the process of installing a number of computers and servers for the city as part of the first phase of the city’s technological upgrade. The city has entered a contract with Southern Technology Consulting to make sure that VC3 is installing all of the hardware and software components outlined in the purchase from VC3. That $23,900 contract also includes help in determining the roles of city staff with the shifting of some of the IT workload to Presidio, officials said.
