An Aurora City Council committee this week recommended a $952,690 contract for the technology requirements of the new Public Works Combined Maintenance Facility on the city’s far East Side.
The vote to send the contract to the council’s Committee of the Whole with a favorable recommendation was 2-1, with Ald. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, voting present, and Ald. Emmanuel Llamas, 1st Ward, absent. Alds. Juany Garza, 2nd Ward, committee chair, and Brandon Tolliver, 7th Ward, voted for it, and Ald. John Laesch, at large, voted against.
The contract combined three elements, involved three companies and was actually four contracts combined into one.
The reason for combining them, according to Ian Wade, of the city’s Public Works Department, was because they all involve the tech in the building. He said the work involves companies that already do business with the city, doing the same work in other buildings.
“We have contracts with all these elsewhere in the city,” Wade said.
The companies are Scientel Solutions, Inc., of Aurora, Alarm Detection Systems, of Aurora, and National Technologies, Inc., which has its headquarters in Downers Grove.
The bulk of the contract, or $646,835, would go to Scientel Solutions, for Wi-Fi and network deployment, video security systems and access control to the city’s Genetec system.
The city has had a contract with Scientel since 2021 to provide those items.
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The part of the contract with National Technologies would be $113,101 to bring the fiber optic from the street onto the property. That company has been bringing the city’s fiber network to the site throughout the past two years. The Alarm Detection Systems part would be $68,490 for the building’s alarm system.
There also is a 15% contingency built into the contract, officials said.
Laesch said he thought the contracts should have been separated, and brought to the council that way. He tried to amend the contract to that end, but the motion failed on a tie, 2-2, vote.
Jeff Anderson, the city’s deputy IT director, said three of the four contracts were bid competitively. The Scientel contract was bid competitively three years ago through the city’s Marketplace independent purchaser.
The only contract not bid competitively was the Alarm Detection one, and city officials said that was because the city works with that company on alarms throughout city buildings.
“We can monitor all (the security in buildings) from a single vendor,” Wade said.
Aldermen also supported a separate $227,650 contract for landscaping at the new facility with Semper Fi Landscaping of Yorkville.
Both contracts will come to the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting next week.
The contracts are among the final ones for the new Public Works facility, estimated to have a final cost of somewhere around $44 million, which Wade said still is “tracking to come in under budget for this project.”
Earlier this year, aldermen approved a $1.4 million contract with Crowne Industries, LTD, of Streamwood, to build the fueling station at the new facility.
The three major contracts, organized by RC Wegman, the construction manager, were for structural steel and precast concrete, of about $8.3 million, 14 other trade packages totaling $17.7 million, and the remaining seven trade packages totaling $3.6 million.
Wade said this week the last contract coming for the facility is for fixtures, furniture and equipment.