05-11-2020 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday,May 11,2020 6:00 o'clock p.m. stumbling over its feet. The wheel does not need to be re-created; best practices are out there. Orono is doing it the hard way; Orono can copy from people who are doing it right. The City is kind of creating their own problems in many ways with the way things come to the Council. If the proposal had been put together with"These are the issues all the way up to this point,"the decision becomes easy and probably would have happened well before this time. Crosby said the Council wants to be proactive rather than reactive. He added he believes Rief received the message. Rief agreed that he did. 16. TERMINATION OF CLEANING CONTRACT Edwards said that for a number of years the City has had a cleaning contract, which, since 2012, has been with Vanguard Cleaning. The performance of the current contractor is subpar and has been declining significantly over recent months.The City required the overarching contractor to change out their crew to try to address the issue. The City is now on the third crew in the last 12 months;this crew has been cleaning the last month or so. There has not been an improvement in performance; in fact,there have been more issues such as lack of vacuuming. He noted Seals asked Rief to put the item on the agenda. He stated most of the department heads concur that the contract should be terminated. The discussion or disagreement will be what the City should do to move forward. Staff recommends termination of the contract. The contract has a 30-day termination notice built into it. If Council approves the termination, notice would be given the following day. The Staff member who manages the contract within the City has been considering ways the City might improve how cleaning is conducted. He said Orono has such a small number of facilities that it is not anyone's first priority when it comes to providing a service. In addition, having a Police Department attached is somewhat unique in the cleaning world,and having people cleared to enter, unescorted, into the Police Department has provided challenges. In addition,the scope of work outlined is perhaps too much and more than what the City needs. He proposed,as an interim solution with the possibility of it becoming permanent,that the City absorb the cleaning responsibilities within one of the seasonal positions, which is a Parks Maintenance worker, by changing that position from a Parks Maintenance seasonal position to a part-time Custodian and Groundskeeper position. It would amount to taking the existing Parks Maintenance position and adding some cleaning tasks to it. They believe the cleaning level needed in the facilities could be handled by a person in about 2 hours a day if the tasks were distributed throughout the day. Currently,the City pays$33,000 a year for the cleaning contract. Eliminating the contract by using a part-time person could be a potential savings achieved of roughly$12,000 a year. He has been talking with several department heads for a while, and as they were soliciting for the regular seasonal positions,they included the position in the solicitation. If the Council is amenable,the current Parks Maintenance worker could be moved to the new Custodian/Groundskeeper position, as he was selected for the Parks position with the thought he might perform both positions. Printup said he supports the plan; it is a good and solid plan. It is not increasing anything; it is moving things around.He asked why this well-developed plan was not brought up earlier. The Council recently learned the cleaning problem is 10-20 years old, and he can remember talking to a past Administrator and trying to figure out what could be done to mitigate some things about the cleaning services. Many years later, a well-thought-out plan is falling into place. As Johnson indicated,he would prefer the proactive piece rather than the reactive piece and succession planning that was talked about. He said the plan fits the City well and there are cost-savings. He suggested again the savings could go to a fall clean-up. Page 13 of 22