Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

With the other big local story today, it may have escaped notice that the Florida House wrote a bill to track sexual predators. I don’t think you’ll find too many people speaking out against it. Some officials are even considering castration for predators. Just Tuesday Manatee County Sheriffs arrested a sex offender after failing to register a change of address. He moved from Pinellas to Manatee, and was found living close to an elementary school. The measure is expected to cost about $13.3 million a year. The Senate will come up with their version soon.

Terri Schiavo has passed away. God bless her.

Jesse Jackson made his way to Pinellas Park, and while he was causing a stir, a protester almost got inside the hospice. So, now that Jesse has come and gone, I guess it’s as good a time as any to add my voice to the Terri Schiavo spectacle.

In a nutshell, the government has no right to be involved in family issues.

I find religious zealots “sanctity of marriage” argument for not allowing gays to wed to be a complete contradiction of their disapproval of Terri’s husband as legal guardian.

The cost to other families with loved ones at the hospice, the kids moved from the nearby school, and the police force detouring traffic are way out of hand. I wish those protesters at Terri’s hospice would get out of the spotlight to perhaps help find some of these kids.

I wish the media stacked up in Pinellas Park would join the protesters in the search.

Judge Greer has done a great job of following the law, all while on the receiving end of horrible thoughts, speech, and wishes, including death threats. The man’s got guts.

As far as I am concerned, my wife knows my feelings on my own end-of-life issues, and many members of my family are going to receive a copy of my living will, so they will be aware of my thoughts as well. Please go to the Florida Bar website. They have forms for a Living Will as well as choosing a Health Care Surrogate to print, fill out and give to your physician for inclusion in your medical records. Send copies to as many family members as you care to.

My heart goes out to Terri, her husband, her parents, and anyone else in this world struggling to make these highly PERSONAL decisions.

As always, I encourage you to read Abstract Appeal for a comprehensive and non-partisan history of the Schiavo mess, including a timeline of all events.

Wifey is at it again. It looks like she’ll be heading out of town this weekend to see the Eagles. The rock group, not the football team. Wifey signed up for a local radio contest to “win a trip to New York,” and she won, naturally. Thanks to the fine folks at Thunder 103.5, she scored a pair of e-tickets for a round trip Continental Airlines flight between Tampa and Newark leaving Friday. The schwag includes a pair of tickets to the concert at the Continental Airlines Arena at the Meadowlands on Friday night, and two nights at the Renaissance in East Rutherford, NJ. That’s the extent of the package. No other transportation (say from airport to hotel to arena) comes with it. I know the New York Giants and New York Jets play in New Jersey, but it’s not really a “trip to New York,” is it? The airport, hotel and concert are all in the Derty Jerz as someone likes to call it. Anyway, I’m not really complaining. I mean, it’s an unplanned, unexpected short weekend trip to the northeast. It’s not like we haven’t been there recently. And I’m sure the weather will be just beautiful. And it’s free, except for meals, transportation, and the taxes that will come due next year. I mean, that’s pretty good prices for a free trip, right?

Created link categories and imported and sorted the blogroll from original blogspot site. I’d like to contact all links to ensure accurate categories.

Last Thursday, City of Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio released a “progress report to the community (pdf).” She followed that up Tuesday with a “State of the City” (pdf) speech along with a video presentation. The Times correctly notes that many of Iorio’s list of accomplishments were actually started by previous administrations. The speech focused on her desire to make Tampa a “livable city,” including a reference to a need for better public transportation. Both documents are big in the “pat your own back” department, and don’t allude to any negatives. She made no mention of an announcement by Delta Airlines to cut 300 jobs in Tampa.

A new (to me) blog appeared in my referral stats today. This happens now and again, and I’ll make a mental note of it to include in a “welcome new blogs” type of self-aggrandizing post. But today’s find comes with a bonus! The author of this new weblog gave me a ringing endorsement! His approval is so well written, it reads like a movie promo. His observation about Sticks of Fire is quite accurate (in my opinion), and I hope to maintain the level of significance that he has noted thus far. Go visit Tampa’s “Is this thing on?” and hover over my link to see his thoughtful and precise commentary.

Let’s say you work for the county. Your department needs some services done by an outside contractor, but you can’t just go out and hire someone. You tell the purchasing department what you need, and they create an RFP, or Request For Proposal. Purchasing then goes through the RFP’s to determine which vendor gets the work. Depending on the need, RFP’s are scored in different ways. In some cases such as street sweeping, the only scoring is price – who can do the job the cheapest? In other cases, such as custom software needs, price is only 30% of the scoring. Knowledge and ability to do the job are also scored. It’s in these subjective qualifications that the best vendor can be chosen. But looked at another way, it’s in these subjective qualifications that friends of county officials can win the job and cost taxpayers more money.

But it’s not just scoring that can affect the cost. Similar needs can be combined into one RFP to eliminate smaller businesses from even applying. For instance, let’s say a new park is needed. A fencing company can put up a chain link, and a paving company can put in a trail. But if the RFP calls for both, only those vendors with experience in BOTH will win the job, possibly at a higher price.

Last September, Hillsborough County issued RFP S-268-04(JH) for 258 convenience copiers AND central copying services. Any copy machine manufacturer can send 258 machines for a base price. Kinko’s (for instance) can staff a copy center. But the county combined them.

In this particular RFP, scoring is as follows: 25 points for understanding the scope and objectives of the desired product/service, 15 points for organization/vendor qualification, and 60 points for the lowest bid. An additional five bonus points are awarded for special incentives (women or minority owned businesses for example).

The top ranked vendor (IKON Office Solutions) got all 25 points for understanding, all 15 points for qualification and their total price is $5.67 million. The second ranked vendor (Savin Corporation d/b/a RICOH Business Systems) priced the work at $5.00 million, but only scored a 13 for understanding the scope, and a 13 for qualification. Awarding the job to IKON will cost Hillsborough County taxpayers an additional $670,000. Here are the scores.

Now, I have no idea who scores the “understanding” portion of the RFP, and it could certainly be accurate. But I find it difficult to believe that any vendor would comprehend only barely more than half (13/25) of the work plan. Either Savin/RICOH is completely incompetent or the scoring is skewed.

Furthermore, it seems that both IKON and Savin/RICOH offered RICOH brand copiers for the convenience copy machines portion. IKON’s proposal, however offered a lesser model (90 copies per minute) than Savin/RICOH (105 copies per minute).

So the leading vendor uses cheaper copy machines but costs 13% (over half a million dollars!!) more than the runner-up. Care to guess how this will play out?