This blog doesn’t regularly quote scripture.

And when it does, it’s usually the gospel according to Franklin, Adams, Jefferson and Lincoln instead of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

But in our post of 03.17.11, we used the words of Luke 16:10 to describe how our public officials’ ability to handle important and expensive tasks is often revealed by how they handle the smaller tasks:

“He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.”

And that principle is at the heart of the article in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate about the Park Ridge Library Board’s rejection of a proposal to purchase $19,232 worth of high-density stackable event chairs, primarily for use in the Library’s first-floor meeting/activity room (“Park Ridge Library Board rejects $19,232 chair purchase,” November 10) – even though the article pretty much misses that principle entirely.

First and foremost (although overlooked in the article), NO Trustee objected to the purchase of new chairs. The current ones are reportedly 35 years old and anybody who has seen them knows they are more than showing their age.

Also missing from the article was any reference to the fact that the Library’s purchasing policy, which requires the Library Director to “secure informal written proposals from suppliers…when an expenditure for a single item” – in this case, 125 stackable chairs – “…is expected to be over $5,000.00 but less than $20,000.00,” was totally ignored.

Instead, the Library Director initially came to the Board on August 5, 2015 with ONE proposal for one particular chair: the KI “Opt4.”

Just that one.

Why?

Because, according to her 08.05.15 memo, that’s a chair that is “comfortable, lightweight and can be stacked up to 40 high,” has a “10 year warranty,” weighs “less than 8 pounds each” and are “in use at several area libraries that report they are very satisfied with their performance.”

“Comfortable” based on what objectively measurable standards? The memo doesn’t say.

“Lightweight”? Why does it matter whether they’re 8 lbs., 11 lbs. or 14 lbs.? How much more “lightweight” than comparable chairs? The memo doesn’t say.

“In use at several area libraries”? Which ones? For how long? The memo doesn’t say.

“[Those libraries] report they are very satisfied with their performance” but how do they “report” it? What does “very satisfied” mean”? What “performance” standards are they applying? The memo doesn’t say.

Yet notwithstanding those 8 unanswered – actually, UN-ASKED – questions, the Library Director inexplicably requested the Library Board to blindly approve those $135.72 chairs. In other words, a rubber-stamp approval without ANY comparables. And without ANY specifications from which such comparables might be objectively determined.

None! Zero! Zip! Nada!

Actually, that’s not quite true: the Library Director tried to create the illusion of “comparables” by juxtaposing the $135.72 per chair cost of her preferred KI chairs with the estimated $110.00 “Cost to repair old chairs” – that NO Trustee suggested should be repaired.

An “irrelevant” non-comparable.

Translation: “I want these particular chairs and I don’t have to justify my wants to you Trustees or to the taxpayers you represent.”

Only after the Board balked at rubber-stamping that purchase did the Director come up with four alleged “comparables,” in a memo dated 09.08.15, despite no objective specifications to demonstrate whether and how those other four chairs might actually be “comparable” to the KI chair. Nor did she provide any objective “Consumer Reports”-style test results, evaluations or recommendations concerning quality, durability, or value of the KI chair or any of the four “comparables.”

Without such specs, test results, etc., the Board decided it should actually see and sit on some of those comparables.

So at the Planning & Operations portion of the October 14, 2015 Committee Of the Whole (“COW”) meeting, the Director provided samples of three allegedly comparable chairs while continuing to assert, as she did in the September 8 memo, that there weren’t many other comparables. Consequently, the minutes of that 10.14.15 meeting reflect that 5 of the 8 trustees present voted for the KI chair while 3 voted against it.

But when the KI chair came up for a final vote at the October 29 Board meeting and after further discussion ensued, a 5 (Egan, Dobrilovic, Foss-Eggemann, Reardon and Trizna) to 3 (Lamb, Parisi and Rayborn) majority voted to reject the Director’s chair recommendation for economic and procedural reasons – including that president Egan noted that he was able to find “many chairs” that appeared comparable to the KI simply through a 10-minute Google search.

You can read that discussion in the “draft” minutes of that portion of the meeting, or you can watch the meeting video, starting at the 54:17 mark and concluding at the 1:08:50 mark,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bcR8UJE0bw

during which you can hear the Director admit that her principal “specifications” for the new chairs was simply “high density” – followed by a lot of vague and subjective pseudo-criteria that ignores the fact that both the KI and the Demco Compact are made primarily of polypropylene (“poly”).

Except that the Demco costs only $48 each, or 35% of the cost of the KI. With no objective proof that the KI is better constructed, is more comfortable, or will last longer.

That’s what happens when the Library’s top administrator ignores the Library’s purchasing policy in the first instance – and then compounds that failure with two months of obfuscation and attempts at circumventing that policy; and when the Library Board is not just a rubber-stamp for the Director.

Irrespective of whether the matter is big or small.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

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