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The Dripby Mark Reutter6:30 pmJul 12, 20110

Inside City Hall: Spending before the Board of Estimates

[UPDATE 7/13: The Board of Estimates unanimously approved all of the spending items below, without discussion, at its meeting this morning.]

Here are some expenditure items, to be taken up tomorrow by the city Board of Estimates, that we thought would interest Brew readers.

The items are expected to be approved by the five-member board headed by City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young but controlled by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her two appointees, Public Works Director Alfred H. Foxx and City Solicitor George Nilson. City Comptroller Joan M. Pratt is the fifth member of the board.

NOTE: The following quotes and data come from the board’s July 13, 2011 agenda.

• $6,036,465 to Associated Black Charities (ABC) as subcontractors and agents for the Baltimore Health Department for the federally funded Ryan White Part A program for people living with HIV/AIDS.

ABC “will provide day-to-day fiscal administration, contracting and monitoring of provider expenditures to ensure reasonableness of reimbursements requested and the compliance to contractual fiscal requirements.”

(By the way, the health department boasts a staff of 18 professionals that oversees the ABC overseeing the health contractors as well as assessing “unmet and emergent needs to develop appropriate capacity building and technical assistance activities,” according to Ralph Brisueno, bureau chief.)

The funds are part of a $23 million federal grant to Baltimore and six surrounding counties to meet the needs of HIV/AIDS-infected residents. In 2008, 17,457 people were identified with HIV/AIDS, with 13,366 of them living in Baltimore city.

• Up to $5,250,000 “for general construction work and related services” under an “indefinite quantity contract” with the Department of General Services. Each of the following seven contractors will be authorized to perform work not to exceed $750,000 over the next two years: Phoenix Contracting Services, Ruff Roofers, Vatica Contracting, J&K Contracting, Citiroof Corp., Simpson of Maryland and Cole Roofing Co.

A number of minority subcontractors will share portions of the contracts, including G.E. Frisco Co., L&J Waste Recycling, A2Z Environmental Group, Abby Enterprises, Acorn Supply & Distributing, Rich Roofing, Boyd Contracting, Ironshore Contracting and Bay Associates Environmental.

• $3 million in state funds for the Park Heights Master Plan to acquire and demolish properties in the redevelopment area.

• $550,000 for “uniform and locker rental with laundry service” to G&K Uniform Service. No other information is available.

• $2,850,000 to modernize the Canton branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library to provide disability access and other improvements to the building on O’Donnell Street.

• a $2 million increase to an existing $1.8 million contract to One Call Concept Locating Services, Inc., to provide the Department of Public Works with utility-relocation marking and related work. On April 8, 2009, the board approved the initial award of $1,103,450, and on February 23, 2011, the board renewed the contract for $700,000. With this award, the contract totals $3,803,450. PAJ Business Staffing, a minority contractor (MBE), has a 10% share of the new contract, and Boonerang Consulting, a women business enterprise (WBE), has 3%.

• $750,000 to Tele-Tector of Maryland for the city’s video surveillance system. This awards comes on top of $2.8 million awarded to Tele-Tector on July 1, 2009. “The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice has requested the additional funds be used for the installation and maintenance of current equipment and additional expansion of the city’s CCTV system.” MBE Paniagua’s Enterprises has a 7% share and WBE Fleet Electric has 3%.

• $887,939 to Lorenz, Inc. to mow grass medians. MBE subcontractor, 4-Evergreen Lawn Care, and WBE, Fouts Lawn Care, will share in the award by the Bureau of Purchases.

• $600,000 to McLean Contacting Co. for structural maintenance and dredging of the Inner Harbor. This amount is on top of $400,000 awarded a year ago and “is necessary to meet the city’s demand for these services.” There are no MBE and WBE subcontractors.

• $310,000 to Altec, Inc., in a non-bid contract, for the purchase of three aerial buckets for the Department of General Services. “The vendor is the original equipment manufacturer of the majority of bucket trucks in the city’s inventory.”

• $1.6 million to ADP, Inc., in a non-bid contract, for proprietary data-processing software and maintenance for the Department of Human Resources.

• up to $1 million to Rummel, Klepper & Kahl for assisting “on call” the Department of Transportation with field surveys and design for traffic signals, detectors, CCTV traffic monitoring and associated work. This contract will be shared with four “disadvantaged business enterprises”: Daniel Consultants, Williams Associates-Engineers, Phoenix Engineering and J.A. Rice.

• $124,764.36 to Rummel, Klepper & Kahl for “on call” electrical inspection of two city water contracts. There are no MBE or WBE subcontractors listed.

• $686,544.92 to Whiting Turner Contracting Co. for upgrades to the Eastern Avenue Pumping Station.

$3,541,711.60 to Civil Construction LLC for Phase II of the Jones Falls Trail. Three disadvantaged business enterprises will participate in the contract: Machado Construction, Priority Construction and Wilton Corp. A protest to this award has been filed by M. Luis Construction Co.

• $376,922 to nine special education consultants, to be hired by the Department of Housing and Community Development, to “implement the requirements of the Head Start Federal Performance Standards for services to children with suspected and documented disabilities and their families.”

• $60,000 to continue employment of two members of the city’s Cease Fire-Gun Violence Reduction Project. One employee  (at $30,000) “will be responsible for utilizing a computer terminal to record a variety of complex and sensitive data from source documents into a database, examine source documents for completeness and return documents to originator for corrections or clarification.”

The second employee will “test suitable non-evidentiary firearms and recover sample cartridge cases and bullet specimens for future entry in the IBIS computer system and enter results of inventories into unit computer programs.”

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