Draft Summary of Teleconference 12-17-99

How the Water Industry Can Assist Communities to Make Wise Choices
in Selecting Procurement Consultants

Participants:

1. Larry Chertoff
2. Dan Elias
3. Roger Feldman
4. Doug Herbst
5. David Mackenzie
6. Ken Maltese
7. Wiff Peterson

Purpose:

The teleconference was initiated by several email messages from members concerned with recent project procurements: Newport, RI, North Royalton, OH, Springfield, MA and Birmingham, AL among them. An article written for Public Works Financing by Steve Steckler has also articulated the issue of consultants representing themselves as unbiased but demonstrating a clear position regarding the benefits of public-private partnering. Some WIC members are concerned that the growth of the contract operations business may also be negatively impacted by consultants who are:

• Charging communities high fees
• Creating lengthy and overly complex procurements
• Generating business, in part, by creating unwarranted anxiety about private sector practices
• Accepting clients and providing guidance in a manner which could be interpreted as conflict of interest.

The teleconference participants unanimously agreed that our industry should:

• counter disinformation about private sector practices
• assist communities in the procurement process by providing information about contract operation procurements that have been successful for the host community,
• produce guidelines and/or examples of contracts we believe will lead to a successful long-term partnership, and
• produce a list of the do's and don'ts of a good procurement advisor.

To counter the disinformation, one Board member suggested that WIC produce an Op Ed piece to distribute through print and internet, to include testimonials by decision leaders (mayors and town managers) who have had successful partnering experiences.

Dan Elias offered to provide model contract table of contents to serve as the basis for the development of the model contract. In a follow-up conversation Dan also suggested that a "Chinese Menu" be created (perhaps for internet use) which would allow users to select from a choice of paragraphs to compose their own model contract. It would conform to a pre-selected table of contents appropriate to their community type, size, etc.

Doug Herbst will suggest "delivery methods" for our campaign.

Roger Feldman volunteered to produce the "10 Commandments" of how a municipal consultant should conduct his work to be fair, unbiased and open about his professional interests.

Dan Elias and Roger Feldman expect to have their first working drafts available for comments before our next board meeting on January 19th. The full Board will consider our thoughts and first actions and guide this committee in its progress.

All participants were asked to think about examples of good procurements, good projects that were implemented and good municipal (decision makers) spokespeople that we can potentially use to deliver "certain messages" to counter the misinformation and myth that exist in the
marketplace.

Larry Chertoff

Exec. Director