Sixth Ward Ald. Marc Mazzuca very well may have the best analytical skills on the Park Ridge City Council…and better than those of any member of City staff.

As we noted in our 02.17.14 post, Mazzuca is the guy who “did some necessary nitpicking about City staff’s cavalier treatment of the competitive bidding process.”  But in our 05.08.13 post, we called Mazzuca “the kind of guy who, armed with an MBA from the University of Chicago, can spend an hour drilling down into a potato chip.”

It was the latter trait that he demonstrated once again this past Monday night during one of the more tedious segments of any City Council meeting.  Ever.

As chair of the Council’s Procedures and Regulations Committee, Mazzuca apparently crafted a purchasing process that he would like the City to adopt.  While that process probably could be a model for General Motors, had he presented it to GM’s management in the manner he presented it Monday night, it probably wouldn’t have received any better a reception than it did from his fellow aldermen and City staff.

It’s not that there was anything inherently wrong with Mazzuca’s process.  Frankly, we’re pretty sure we don’t entirely understand it, and we’d hazard a guess that neither do those members of City staff who would have to implement it, or the aldermen who will decide whether or not to approve it.

One flaw in Mazzuca’s process, however, is that he seems to have constructed it without enough input from the staff – and at times Monday evening he seemed impervious to questions and criticisms from those people, even the ones that sounded like something other than simply obstructionist beefs from folks bristling at any kind of competitive bidding.

While most aldermen did not look or sound prepared for Mazzuca’s onslaught, staff seemed too defensive to seriously consider the points he was making about the current City process and procedures.

When it comes to matters that require painstaking analysis, Mazzuca may be the smartest person in the room.  But he doesn’t advance his own agenda or the taxpayers’ business when he makes it obvious that he knows it.

The aldermen also didn’t look or sound prepared for, or interested in, sparring with Fire Chief Mike Zywanski over his department’s recommendation that the City buy five Zoll defibrillators to replace the City’s five current Zoll defibrillators.

You might remember that purchase, which we wrote about in several posts, including “Is It Fraud Or Is It Negligence” and “Chief Z’s Still A Zoll Man”.   Despite a year of trying to create the semblance of a legitimate competitive bidding process after Chief Z tried to push this purchase through on a no-bid basis, what he and his staff came up seems contrary to the principles of competitive bidding as we understand it.

As can be seen from the Deputy Fire Chief’s Agenda Cover Memorandu, despite the bids having been opened on January 23, as of February 24 the “Total Cost” of this competitively-bid purchase is “TBD”: To Be Determined.

Say what?  After conducting a competitive bidding process over a month ago they still don’t know what the price is?

From the Minutes of the January 28 Bid Evaluation Committee meeting and the related e-mails, it sounds like NONE of the bids complied with the bid specifications.  But instead of throwing out all the noncompliant bids, as is customarily the case, the Committee decided to use them as a starting point for manufacturing bids based on questions the Committee would submit.

Seriously.

Not surprisingly, the Minutes of the Committee’s February 3 meeting note that “the bid numbers…were preliminary numbers” because the Committee still didn’t have all the answers from the clarifying questions.  But, lo and behold, when all the questions were answered and all the smoke cleared, the Minutes from the February 12 Committee meeting confirmed that…wait for it…ZOLL! turned out to be the low “bidder.”

How convenient!

Betting on Zoll in this game of “competitive” (allegedly) bidding roulette was about as sure a thing as betting on 22 at Rick’s cafe in “Casablanca” was for that Bulgarian couple.

So long as Rick, or Chief Z, was calling the shots.

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