08-27-07 Special Called Regular Meeting of Development Corporation

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City of La Porte Interoffice Memorandum Date: All LPEDC Board Members Gretchen Bla~rMf John Joems, ACU~ October 31, 2007 To: From: Through: Subject: Sealed RFP #08501 - Website Design The bids for the economic development website design are in and have had a preliminary review by the Purchasing Manager and her staff. In reviewing the submittals we feel that we have encountered some issues that perhaps make it necessary to reject all the bids and start anew. We also discussed the issues encountered with the selection committee which included members from the Purchasing, GIS, and MIS Departments as well as VP Matuszak and they concurred with our findings. As you may know, the purchasing department places the RFP's on the city website for others to download but unfortunately at the time of this RFP there was not a system in place to confirm and track who has downloaded the information. This became an issue with the RFP because we did have a clarification/amendment to the RFP after the pre- bid meeting which was therefore, not provided to everyone. The Purchasing Department has since corrected this issue. There were also a number of vendors who thought that this RFP was a refurbishment of the city site and not a new section/site for the economic development office. We also felt that we did not receive a wide enough range of companies who have created city websites and more importantly ED websites to allow the Board to select from. We also discussed that there may be a silver lining in this process in that if we are able to meet with the Assistant City Manager and City Manager perhaps we can explore a possible refurbishment of the city website in conjunction with the ED site. This should allow us to obtain an over all more cohesive look for both and perhaps it could even be expanded to incorporate the Main Street Program as well thereby reducing overall expenses for all the funds. Of course we understand that budget constraints will have to be taken into account but felt we would be remiss not to mention that option for their consideration and recommendation to the Board. The recommendation of the Committee at this time is to resolve the issues encountered with the RFP, allow staff to meet with the City Manager, Assistant City Manager and the Finance Director to explore the options related to expanding the scope of work and report back accordingly for action by the Board at a meeting in the near future. c: Ron Bottoms, City Manager