|
In a 4-3 split, Sunnyvale's city council voted at its July 22 meeting to outsource the city's custodial work and let 15 temporary agency custodial employees go. Mayor Julia Miller and council members Fred Fowler and John Howe were the dissenters.
The city council awarded the contract to Clean Innovation Corp. in Santa Clara for custodial services in city buildings. The outsourced services will begin in the next few weeks.
"During the past several months, staff has explored options to reduce the cost of janitorial services while maintaining a reasonable level of cleanliness and infrastructure maintenance at city facilities," said Elaine Wesely, the city's purchasing officer. They even looked into making custodial work in-house.
But according to the city's staff report, if the city used in-house services the cost could be as high as $613,711 for one year. Clean Innovation's one-year bid was $276,000.
The city currently uses two janitorial contractors, one full-time city employee and temporary agency employees to conduct its custodial work.
The approved contract will allow the full-time city employee to serve as a quality control agent and to act as a liaison between the city and Clean Innovation employees. The 15 temporary employees will be let go.
The current fiscal year's budget for janitorial services is $203,000. Since the council approved the contract, it agreed to fund the difference of $73,000 to pay Clean Innovation.
But some question the city's calculations.
Ben Holgate, representative of the Service Employees International Union of Santa Clara County, told the council, "For the last three years staff has grossly under-budgeted the custodial work in this city."
According to John Pilger, communications officer for the city, the custodial budget is under the building services budget, which is under the department of parks and recreation. "Within building services, we came close to our budget last year," Pilger said. So even if the money allotted to the custodial services was not sufficient, the city still had enough money to pay for those services from the larger building services budget.
"These are very difficult financial times for municipal governments all over the state. This will save us several hundred thousands of dollars," said council member Manuel Valerio, who made the motion to approve the outsourcing contract.
|
