Two-county group reviews benchmarks

Apr 08, 2014 at 11:24 pm by Observer-Review


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Two-county group reviews benchmarks

FINGER LAKES—Yates and Schuyler County officials met Wednesday, April 2 to continue work on conducting a shared services study. The members of the Steering Committee for Exploration and Oversight of Collaboration Opportunities between Yates and Schuyler had ranked the firms who applied to conduct the study and discussed which ones would fit the best.
“There really seemed to be a big difference in that some of the firms did try to address what was in the request for proposals (RFP) and others didn’t take much time to read their proposals at all,” Yates County Administrator Sarah Purdy said. “You could tell pretty quickly [if] one is not cutting it. Toward the end some of the proposals didn’t strike their fancy at all. Some of them were clearly on the weak side.”
The committee narrowed the list down to the five top contenders for the study based on the evaluations given to each firm by the committee members. Each proposal was evaluated based on experience in completing similar types of projects, the firm’s understanding of the work to be done, the quality of their proposed staff for the project, familiarity with county government rules and regulations, the capacity to perform based on the firm’s resources and current workload, and the consideration of cost factors.
“It is no surprise then when compiling the results there were three that really rose to the top,” Purdy said. “[...] I thought the ranking exercise would produce some consensus and it actually produced a lot more than I expected it to.”
The top five firms selected were the Center for Governmental Research (CGR), Berkshire Advisors, Bond, Schoeneck and King, Management Partners and VMC. The committee determined they would interview these candidates after conducting some background research on each one to help determine what questions to ask.
“I suspect this isn’t going to turn up any surprises,” Schuyler County Administrator Tim O’Hearn said. “I don’t think we will rule anybody out during this process.”
The committee discussed having the two county administrators along with the county chairmen conduct the interview, while the rest of the committee members observe and take notes. The interviews are set to take place April 21, 22 and 25. The committee plans to make its final decision after the final April 25 interview.

 

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