(Continued from Part 1)
Bolkcom: When you talk about display phone versus basic telephones, both have 16 buttons. What are those buttons like the 1 through 0?
Cole: They're programmable buttons. You can set them up how you like to. They may access features. They might access speed dial numbers.
Lacina: You could program in your long distance calling codes, so that it would bill back to individual numbers or (inaudible) and those types of functions.
Grove: I can actually set that up within the system so it wouldn't take a button.
Lacina: OK, so it's automatically from that the phone then logs into a number that we can...
Grove: Yes.
Bolkcom: What's the 4 button basic phone. What's it like?
Cole: That doesn't give you any indicators of other people on the phones, any extension indicators. It's basically just got 4 programmable buttons. That's it. So we tend to use those in areas where you don't need to know that information. Like a break room, warehouse environment. Somewhere where you just want to be able to pick up a call, but you don't need to know any other information.
Lacina: But if you want to somebody on hold and then use another line you're going to need an expanded phone beyond that.
Cole: Well you can put somebody on hold on the 4 button phone. I mean it has really basic, basic features. It's harder to transfer calls, you can do it, but it's harder to transfer calls from one place to another because you don't have the ease of having the buttons programmed the way you want them to be. Then the 16 button has the 16 programmable buttons. The display actually has a little LED display that can be programmed with like, there's like 21 different messages that can be programmed in that display. So you can leave your desk and you can say out or the office or it might say be back at 2 o'clock. If someone tries to dial your extension they'll have that information. So it's a silent messaging type of function.
Jordahl: Within the County?
Cole: Right. Internally a silent messaging system.
Dvorak: The system, from my understanding, this will not answer the phone per say and say push button one for the Board of Supervisors, push button 2 for P & Z. That's when you manually switch it to that right? Or to a voice mail?
Grove: Yes. I have that functionality. Yes I would set the system up to say...
Dvorak: I don't want it to do that at all. I would not participate if we had that.
Grove: Most companies and most applications that we're installing the systems stay with a personalized answering of the phone from say 8 to 5 or 8:30 to 4, whatever the hours are. Then after that the system kicks in and it says...
Dvorak: If both the lines are busy would it kick in automatically too, if both the lines are tied up.
Grove: If you had another line for it to go to yes. I'm being limited by the 2 lines. If you only had 2 lines and both of those lines are tied up nobody can get you from the outside or (inaudible).
Dvorak: That's why I thought maybe this kicked in then.
Grove: But if there's no lines into they can't get in. But it wouldn't be able at night to say, if somebody called the Supervisors' Office and say they called the office and it said our office hours are 8 to 5 if you want to leave a message for Carolyn press one.
Dvorak: But we've got an answering machine that already does that.
Grove: Uh-huh.
Cole: This is the financial summary again on the lease agreement. It is based the same way on a one dollar purchase option. Just to give you an idea of what a monthly payment would be. Then the purchase outright. You're getting a whole new phone system and all new phones with this system. So that's the big difference. A larger voice mail system. The service agreement is down here at the bottom.
Bolkcom: Which phone was priced.
Grove: The 16 button display.
Cole: Yes, the 16 button display. Then the service agreement price is at the bottom, $1,084. That would be after the first year.
Grove: I didn't write the numbers down but I think Jonathan did. There were some changes that would be made to your existing maintenance agreement that you're on today. This would actually lower your maintenance agreement or it came out the same with the voice mail I think.
Jordahl: Well if I can interpret my notes here. It says there would be a $1,094 difference between the service contract that we now have and the proposed new service contract caused by our taking 20 of the new phones with their one year warranty. In other words we would not be paying for the service contract during that first year out of our current service contract. So what we are currently paying would not have to be paid for those 20 phones, so we could effectively subtract that amount from the service contract amount that's budgeted here. So instead of $17,153 for the total installed system cost it would be $16,058.60 the first year and then after the warranty expired it would be back up to a higher service cost. It's kind of a curiosity I guess but there is something like a $1,000 difference there during the first year.
Cole: This is everything. Proposal number 3, a new telephone system and voice processing system for all of Johnson County Administration Offices. Similar goals in mind, just this is system-wide.
Dvorak: The reason you chose the 3 offices, is that similar to a pilot project then?
Cole: Maybe Scott can answer that question better than I can, but we just wanted to...
Dvorak: (Inaudible).
Cole: You're talking in proposal number 2.
Peters: No those offices were chosen because your system, our's and Recorder's are on the same subsystem, they function together. When your phone doesn't work, our phone doesn't work. Just like yesterday morning, Information Services didn't work and the 2 Assessors didn't work. They are on a...
Dvorak: (Inaudible).
Stutsman: How many subsets are there in this building?
Peters: 4.
Stutsman: There's 4.
Peters: You have the Treasurer, the Auditor, and then Pat Langenberg is on the phone. I ought to start working for Digital.
Cole: I think you could Carol. This is a bigger telephone system. It's a Digital 400 System. It would be configured for 48 lines, not that you would have to use all of those lines, but that's how much the system can handle the way it's priced out. 96 digital station ports or 96 telephones is an easier way to understand that. 32 Analog ports, again for voice mail, faxes, modems, that type of thing. So some of the other things listed there are part of the telephone system as well. We priced out 91 sixteen button display speaker phones and then the Telrabbit Voice Processing System would have 16 ports, so 16 people could get into the system at any one time. The Imagic is actually a different voice processing system. It's completely integrated. It has some features that the others do not. One of the things that it has is a call record feature. So if you would receive a phone call in your department and it would be information say that you would want to transfer to another department you could hit call record, record that conversation and you could transfer it into someone else's mailbox. It's really really nice. That's a unique to the Imagic System.
Stutsman: Carol, if we did this third option would we get rid of all of those subsets then?
Peters: I'm not sure how that would function.
Grove: Yes. That would be replacing all 4 systems.
Peters: It would replace what we have.
Stutsman: We would have the subset system?
Peters: That I don't know.
Grove. No. You would not.
Peters: When we were visiting, if the Board were to go to, and they're providing this information just so you have something to work with here, this would be something you would want to go back... I would recommend you follow the same procedure when you purchased the system for DHS. You know hire a consultant, have a consultant go out and visit with the department heads, find out just exactly what the needs are there, because this will be a whole new system.
Stutsman: Is there an advantage to having these subsets, I'm thinking like if our system is down at least somebody else's systems can work. I just trying to think, is it better to be on different systems?
Peters: I can't answer that Sally.
Grove: Linn County is set up differently. ESCs with the school districts is different, Iowa City schools are set differently. We have all of their systems. Why they went with 4 subsystems back then, I'm not real sure. Is it advantageous to have one? Another advantage that we will see by going to one system is within your Centrix Plus System you're paying for a dial tone which refers to a network access register. Every time you call or every time somebody makes a call or receives a call or calls internally within the County, you're utilizing a network access register. By putting in one large system and going to, and I don't know the number, I'm going to decrease the need for as many NARs as your using today. I don't know what your using today.
Peters: 28.
Grove: 28 and those are $32 dollars a month or something like that.
Peters: Well actually...
Grove: You billed them in.
Peters: ...we billed them in.
Grove: Somewhere around $32 a month and so your cost per line of $30 would be decreased by a portion of that $32.
Peters: When I say our costs are approximately $30 a line for the dial tone that also includes other features that you may have, such as are you in (inaudible) here and how you want to them to hunt.
Grove: There's a lot of things that go into it for example, cost and I don't know when your Centrix contract is up, but you're going to have a lot more options when that comes up and probably reduce your costs from your Centrix.
Jordahl: Now your talking about costs here and I didn't know if I was daydreaming, but you seem to be talking about sort of an emergency system crashing function. Did that get addressed.
Stutsman: I just was looking for advantages to go to one system over these subsets and that was a consideration if the whole system went down at least somebody's phones were working.
Peters: And that could happen.
Jordahl: Are we opening up ourselves to the liability of the whole building going down, are we making that more likely by centralizing into one system, would be another way of phrasing the question.
Grove: Certainly. Is it a concern? Being in the business I would say not. The odds of if you look at your mean time between failure, down time with the system, it's minimal. It's obviously going to be less expensive to put in one large system than 4 systems. Your paying for one processor in this case versus 4 processors.
Lacina: Statistically it's a little bit like having 4 used cars. Your odds of one of them being down are greater than if you invest in one good system and keep it up and functioning. If your good system goes down immediately you go in and you get it back on line. Obviously you do with the other 4 too, but like I said it's just duplication, and the question is if it is not good equipment you need that backup or redundancy. If it's really on line and pretty dependable, you don't want to duplicate it?
Jordahl: Well what about a backup system? Is that part of this? Could we have one, what cost would there be? Maybe that's asking you to generate all of these numbers right now, but lets ask that question. Maybe you've got one good car and one used one and you're kind of like if the good one breaks down at least I've got something to drive.
Grove: It would take more time for me to get that used system up and running to facilitate what you had than it would be for me to replace this entire box.
Lacina: So a moral question also might be what is response time? If this system goes down, how quickly can you get it back up and functioning?
Grove: Our guaranteed up and running is 4 hours.
Lacina: Wow OK.
League of Women Voters Representative Linda Whitaker: I'm just a member of the public (inaudible). The League of Women Voters is real interested in technology and the government and so forth. My question is, if the present system was installed in 1986, it has had 11 years of service, mixed service perhaps, but service.
Peters: Actually, we've had very good service.
Whitaker: What would you anticipate the longevity for this new service looking down the road anticipating change and so forth?
Grove: That's a great question.
Jordahl: She does a good job.
Stutsman: Do you have a crystal ball?
Grove: No, I don't. But all I can base that on are the standards that are written today. Telephone systems are more and more based upon the computer-telephone standards. People are right now the standard is going to say an NT network. We are an NT network. So from the compatibility standpoint, I'm fairly comfortable. What's going to come after NT, I don't know. I don't know the name, but it is an open architecture system. So that if I look at Microsoft's evolution is always being able to maintain the past and bring it up to speed. The products that we market are along those same philosophies. The average life of a phone system is 7 years and 9 times out of 10 that life is taken away, because the system is outgrown. Today's systems are, you can't outgrow them. I can network them together. I can make 9999 systems look like one, so that if you want to call Carol from across the country, you can dial Carol from across the country on the same system. Systems aren't being displaced like they were (inaudible). To say what the life expectancy is mean time between failure on most of the Telrad processors is 23 years.
Dvorak: Quality of (inaudible), has it improved. What I'm leading to is if we are digitizing aerial photos and I want to send those to Steve through our phone system, is the quality better through digital than (inaudible).
Grove: Depending upon what is connecting the 2 offices is going to determine the quality and the speed of that transmission. I have a digital system, so I will take it out of a computer digitally. If you called that location on a dial-up number than now I am limited to an analog circuit transmission. So now I'm going to get 28.8 or 33.6 or whatever. If you put a digital circuit in there, then yes, your transmission qualities will be much greater, your speeds are going to be much greater. You also are going to incur a lot of the cost. So the quality is not necessarily going to change based on this phone system. If you upgrade the circuits within there, your quote network, then yes those will (inaudible). Iowa City Schools is for example is on a frame relay network. So they're running data circuits to every school, accessing faxes, documents and things like that off of their server. Yes it's better, it's faster, but now they're going to start implementing voice over their data circuits which will decrease the amount of lines they're using substantially. So there's a lot of different ways to do it to make the answer to your question a long drawn out. It's all based on what's between.
Lacina: Going back to Linda's question too, which was a very good one, if we consider the life of a system 10 years, we don't want to take a snapshot of a system, we don't want to buy a system now that works now. We almost want to look ahead 5 years, because at least we're not buying the most expensive chromed system, but it can get us into 5 and we can try to survive the next 5 with some minor upgrades. But as we lay fiberoptics now for data communication between some of the different sites, we'll have high quality transmission but then if we come down into an old phone system that's the really weak link on the chain. So again the overall rule of thumbs you never buy the cheapest one. A rake with a cheap handle is going to break, and you also don't buy the chrome model, but something in the middle that will function and give you time and hopefully that's what we can find.
Peters: Just to follow up on one or two... It isn't that our phone system is broken or doesn't function, it's just that it doesn't have features which I think the County as a whole will be wanting to use.
Lacina: We're having a few breakdowns.
Peters: Always have, always will.
Lacina: We had a problem with switching lines with the secure system with the... What was it? We wired the elevator and dropped the jail or vice versa.
Peters: That wasn't actually a breakdown. What that was was... It was a breakdown. It was a breakdown of communication. It wasn't a breakdown with the system; it was just there was some information that wasn't totally understood. I try to be diplomatic about this.
Stutsman: This system, should this be coordinated with our plans for space.
Peters: Oh, definitely.
Stutsman: So it really... This isn't something that we're thinking about doing tomorrow.
Peters: Scott wanted to give you a full overview of what they... You know what it was that they have to offer.
Stutsman: OK.
Peters: And also something to think about. Because it remains for 3 years.
Grove: (Inaudible) from a space standpoint, you're utilizing a lot of space right now. If that is a concern, this proposal here for one system for the entire building would be a third of the equipment that you're using.
Stutsman: What do you mean a third of the equipment?
Grove: You've got 4 big boxes hanging down the wall. My system could do this whole thing as probably the same size as what you have in there today for one box and you've got 4 of them.
Stutsman: (Inaudible) can use that space (inaudible).
Dvorak: We can store records in there.
Lacina: It's pretty small. It's on that one wall, panels
Peters: It's just like computers you know. They used up much more space than they do today.
Grove: My circuit cards are what we would refer to as higher density. The line cards that Carol is referring to have access to 4 lines per card, mine are 8, 12 and 16.
Jordahl: Scott, you're saying that we put one box, there is some greater liability of going down as a whole building, can you isolate the weak link in the system and say this is the piece most likely to go down? When something goes down is it kind of different things?
Grove: I don't want to sound like a salesman, but probably the weakest link is the phone itself that gets coffee spilled in it.
Jordahl: I resemble that remark.
Grove: I mean I'd be more than happy, we've put Telrad systems into the schools, into the County; we just don't have problems with them. Have we had problems yes, but to isolate one thing and say you're going to do this I would have this as a backup. I wouldn't spend money to do it.
Jordahl: Without duplicating the system, you couldn't' do a backup.
Grove: Yes. The only thing I would recommend and I don't know what your problems, what your history is would be an uninterruptable power supply.
Peters: The system that we have now has battery backup, so that if the electricity goes out or something it has a 2 hour period. What happened yesterday morning, I believe, and Mike is one the technicians that works on our equipment here and a very good technician too, he said it was just simply nothing more than a power failure that happened with all of the storms. It was just one of the things that couldn't be avoided. What happened was that that system needed to be reprogrammed. So it took him probably half an hour because he had to reprogram all of the lines on that system.
Bolkcom: How many current phones do we have? If we're talking about proposal 3, we're going to have 91 phones, does that equal what we have now?
Grove: We had a little discrepancy there.
Peters: We have 85.
Bolkcom: We have 85? OK.
Cole: We need to subtract, what is that 6 times $258.
Grove: We just added in a little growth.
Bolkcom: Sure, not a bad idea. How many lines do we have? Are we increasing that here or is it the same?
Grove: We have the capacity in here to handle everything that you have today.
Bolkcom: OK.
Grove: I thought, I've been wrong 3 times already. I think it was around 34, something like that.
Bolkcom: So we'd have 48 possible. Is that right?
Cole: Right, the system would be capable of handling 48 lines but you may only use 32 or 35 or whatever.
Bolkcom: What's the breakoff, is it by twelve's? What's the next lesser...
Grove: Central office lines go in 8's.
Bolkcom: Eights?
Grove: Yes.
Jordahl: We could have 40?
Grove: Yes.
Jordahl: To revisit my pet topic here could we run like 4 or 5 separate phones to the offices in the building one line each just to as separate to this system all together, would that constitute a backup or would that constitute being ridiculous.
Grove: OK. No. I'll tell you what we can do. There is a wiring scheme that provides what we refer to as power failure, so that in the event that the switch would go down, I'll have power failure stations set up, so that you would still be able to receive incoming calls if somebody has an emergency. It's just when they wire it they have to wire it up.
Jordahl: I like that answer.
Bolkcom: What's the total?
Cole: Next page. Again the lease payments just like before, same parameters and then the total purchase price at the bottom. I'll move it up and I'll show you (inaudible).
Grove: What's your current service, 44?
Peters: 4661.
Grove: So your getting more phones and voice mail for less money.
Stutsman: And that 45 is the whole system to last hopefully 10 years.
Cole: Or more.
Bolkcom: When the Board started talking about this we started talking about it in the context of having voicemail capacity for this office and by way of extension it seems to me that voice mail for this office probably would be a benefit to voice mail for other offices. The degree that there is a lot of other bells and whistles with this system would be something I'd be interested in finding out. As a way if we're going to look at reducing costs. I know we have these phones now with I don't know how many buttons on them, on a regular basis I use maybe 2 or 3 of the buttons, not 16 of the buttons. So when I look at the capacity, it's kind of like getting a new computer and I want to do word-processing, but it does 8 million other things that I'll probably never use. Trying to match what our needs are. I guess a survey of some sort of departments needs about hands free, speaker phone, forwarding, what are the core needs of a system versus what does it do?
Grove: What does it do?
Bolkcom: Yes.
Stutsman: You know part of problem with that is we just don't do enough training on phones. I never received any training.
Peters: They'll send someone out.
Stutsman: I think we just need to take advantage of that. Every 3 months or whatever is the new training, because I agree completely with what your saying. I equate it to my microwave, it's got all of these buttons on it but all I want it to do is defrost the hamburger, so what's the point of having that stuff.
Cole: Right. There are hundreds of different features too and we just try to pick out the ones when we talk to people of different departments or businesses, we try to pick out the ones that they would use most frequently, because it is overwhelming how many features they have.
Peters: You know the one feature that we have on these phones, which I think is underutilized the most, and that is of course there again we come back to our little subsets here, is we can call anybody we want to in the Recorders Office and the Zoning Office without having to dial the 4 digits. They're programmed into these buttons up here.
Stutsman: Oh, really?
Bolkcom: When did that happen?
Peters: When did that happen? In 1986. And the callback feature is nice.
Jordahl: Well Joe has raised the question about bells and whistles. Is it the case that there is a lot of electric windows on these telephones that we don't really need or not?
Cole: The systems are very feature rich. Again you probably will only use a few of the many many features that are available. I think that is part of what technology has provided us though is the ability to do that. With the voice processing system of course within the entire system is the way you want it programmed and the way you want it designed. So these are your choices as to how you want things set up and this is the way its actually going to be for you.
Jordahl: To reframe that question could we substitute less enriched telephones for example, four button phones for 16 button phones, and save a significant portion of this cost or not?
Cole: I guess it depends on what information your willing not to have. If you didn't want to have any other information about who else is on the phone or access to any programmable features, you could do that.
Grove: I think going back to the process if you all are going to bring in a consultant to write a (inaudible) then I would expect them to do reviews and determine the needs of the individual. If the needs of those individuals in those areas are nothing more than a 4 button set then, great, yes, you could reduce the actual cost. But if the expanded sets with more buttons and the display are going to provide a more efficient means of communicating that individual within Johnson County then usually the expense is warranted.
Jordahl: It looks here that $32 is the difference in cost per so between a 16 and 32 button phone so we're talking about 85 16 button display speaker phones if I can pull out my friendly calculator over here. 85 times $32 is the difference. Bob are you faster?
Bolkcom: The bids were on the display phones not on the more expensive.
Jordahl: Right exactly, so could we save the $2700.
Bolkcom: Well it's actually like 64 dollars difference between the 16 button display and the 16 button phone. Which would be about 5600, 5800 dollars. I mean it's 5800 bucks.
Grove: Take it over 10 years.
Bolkcom: Yes.
Jordahl: Yes, that's not where the big cost in this thing is.
Stutsman: So where do we go from here Carol?
Peters: I would recommend that the Board digest what Gina and Scott has presented to you and think again, do you want to go with voice mail for this office; do you want to go with voice mail for the 3 offices; do you want to put everything on hold until a thorough study can be done to see what the whole building needs? The one thing I would like to point out in proposal number 1, OK, in order to, and this is the lowest cost... But in addition to that $2692, correct me if I'm wrong Scott and Gina please. It was my understanding that we would need to add 2 additional phone lines, which would be an additional $60 a monthly more or less.
Cole: That's correct.
Peters: So even though the initial is much less, but I think this is something you're going to have to consider when you sit down and decide exactly what you want your office structure to be.
Stutsman: Does the Board have any more questions?
Bolkcom: It sounds like the proposals build on each other. If we decided to go with voice mail for this office, we could do that, and basically one piece of a bigger system that would be compatible with phase 2 or phase 3 or no?
Peters: I do know this that in visiting with a couple of the other departments, that if the Board does go with voice mail you're going to have some other departments...
Bolkcom: ...that want to.
Peters: Yes.
Stutsman: I'm just wondering if we shouldn't just take a survey or talk to the other departments see if they want to.
Bolkcom: I'm sure they would. In terms of getting a consultant we're basically talking about hiring somebody to do an assessment for us.
Peters: That's what I would recommend.
Stutsman: What did that run last time Carol?
Peters: You know I don't remember what his fee was. I think the system you ended up with cost something like 45.
Stutsman: I was thinking it was something like 40 or 50,000.
Peters: No, it was a system up at DHS.
Bolkcom: I thought we spent like 15,000 or something on a consultant, could that be?
Peters: This sounds awfully high.
Grove: 10% of the purchase cost, maybe.
Bolkcom: Is that right, OK.
Grove: That's...
Bolkcom: Because I thought we had a separate consultant that went out and got all of the bids for us, but maybe it was.
Peters: No that's what you did have was a separate consultant.
Grove: Who was the consultant, did we do that?
Peters: McGladrey.
Grove: Oh, no.
Lacina: One of the questions will be where will the money come from? And the suggestion and I think a legitimate area for us to look at those funds would be the technology money. The $125,000 that we set aside for the computer committee, it appears that not all of the departments are going to request that. If we look at this system and build it over a 3 or 5 year payback, our cost on a 3 year payback for the most expensive system is 18,000 a year, which we could come out of the technology fund, especially if we combine it with the fiber optics and a communications systems as opposed to telephones. So at that point we're looking at interfacing computers, fax machines, document imaging, and the whole thing and I think that is a legitimate area to come up with the money.
Grove: If you bring in a consultant... There's a lot of, I don't know what your grand scheme of things is. I would assume connecting every location and I don't know how many buildings you have, and running fiber to every location, if that's the 5 year plan or whatever, I may change this. Maybe we look at, I don't know how many buildings you have. Lets say there's 15 buildings, putting them on one entire system.
Jordahl: We do have a 5 year networking plan. Did Jean discuss that with you?
Stutsman: I think talking about space needs...
Jordahl: Well he's talking about fiber in terms of whether the phone system would be unitary throughout the County or whether it would be one in this building and one someplace else.
Lacina: See we're probably not real aggressive on fiber, but we'll probably have 3 locations that we will really push hard to have. Health is probably one that will go first, and eventually DHS and the Courthouse is going to be very critical. So not all have a real need for fiber but some really do.
Cole: That's fine.
Lacina: But the system needs to be built so that works, because obviously.
Grove: I can spoke off if you run 3 buildings and connect them by a fiber and you've got another building right next door to it that is a part of the middle building, in today's world I need to spoke that back to here. Where as if you build a connection to the pipes between them then I'm just going to spoke off of that shorter distance and in essence save you money.
Lacina: See as nuts as it sounds and I guess I have to blame the legislature for this one too, we're barred by law from tapping into the ICN, even though the State spent all of that money. But the connection is next door over here at the National Guard Armory. In time if our legislators are successful and they'll realize the error in their ways, allow us and the schools and others to tap onto that then we also have to be ready to make that step and have the technology available to use it.
Bolkcom: It would be helpful to whatever consultant to get a real firm grounding in what our networking proposal is in the next 5 years. I mean we have a very active proposal to network all of our buildings and some real definite plans about that.
Grove: Who put that together.
Bolkcom: It was put together by a committee that the Board of Supervisors appointed and then reviewed and...
Grove: Internal?
Lacina: No external.
Bolkcom: No external.
Grove: Oh.
Bolkcom: Members of the public and then it's been massaged by internal, by our staff, by our Information Services staff and there is a specific proposal to do that over a 5 year period.
Lacina: Informational offices from banks, private sector, but all looking at their fields of communication electronics.
Grove: We work a lot with consultants and I can just picture if you tell me who the consultant is, I can picture what they would send back.
Peters: When this system was quoted, our Information Services department basically drew up what was really needed. They visited with the department heads and at that time it was Jeff Hall, our technical person, and your consultant would definitely want to include Information Services in their deliberations.
Grove: We would be more than happy to act as a free consultant or whatever; we don't charge for it.
Jordahl: I think you raise a real good point here. I mean do we need to pay a separate consultant or will competitors for the County's business sort of do that function themselves and we can compare what they come up with.
Lacina: I think if we go over 50,000 we may not have a choice, we may have to go out for bids.
Grove: We've done it in Cedar Rapids Schools, I think we take the voice processing out of it and include that separately.
Lacina: OK.
Grove: I mean there's a lot of different ways you can make that work. I'd be more than happy to give you proposals or RFP's that we've written for other companies. Read through them and get some ideas behind them. To go to the expense and have a consultant do this, I would try to talk you out of it. It takes money out of the budget to expand your communications.
Duffy: Agreed.
Bolkcom: Charlie likes you.
Grove: I'm not a consultant fan, if you didn't catch onto that.
Duffy: You're right.
Jordahl: I'm saying the bids would kind of incorporate a consulting function in as much as they were each trying to propose a system that would balance the provision of features that we might want or need against the cost, so as to get the bid. I don't know why we'd need a consultant for that but maybe I'm wrong.
Peters: One of the nice things about having a consultant is, unless of course you feel that we have the capabilities in-house, is a consultant knows the terminology, they know the products that are out there.
Stutsman: They know the right questions to ask.
Peters: They can talk technical issues, which I would never assume to try to do.
Stutsman: Are the any other questions for right now?
Reverend Bob Welsh: One assumption I'm like Linda except she's with League of Women Voters and I'm just myself. Is Joe's statement correct, that if you went with proposal number one and do that in step one and then in step 2 do proposal 3, that all of the money invested in the equipment for number one can be used in number 3? I gathered it was different material and so it wouldn't...
Grove: Well proposal number one is a small voice mail system for 2,700. If we went from proposal number one to proposal number 3 in fell swoop, I would take that back and give you your 2,700 back and do proposal number 3.
Welsh: So it wouldn't be the equipment, but it would be the money.
Grove: Proposal 2 to number 3 the answer to it is yes. But proposal one to 3 is no.
Welsh: So if the Supervisors did number one today and then in a year decided to go to proposal 3, they could go into 3 and have credit for what they did.
Grove: I would not have any problem with that.
Stutsman: Why don't we...
Duffy: Can I make one statement? I know we should do something, because I've seen all 3 of our units and any of the Supervisors up here and Carol and the rest of the staff are busy all at the same time. But it looks like we should wait to see when the budgets come in. This should be a wish list type thing. It's not professional, but still I think we ought to wait until the budgets next fiscal year come in.
Stutsman: Steve mentioned the technology fund. You know if that money is not spent...
Lacina: That's levied in perpetuity if we don't reallocate it. I mean we could take a 3 year payback program from that fund. Again we need to check with Jean to make sure that we're not going to make a major upgrade or that the fiber is going to come in more expensive than we expected. Health, but that would be to me a legitimate area as opposed to going into Zonings budget or ours or 18. We could look at 18, but to me it's still technology.
Jordahl: Well it's legitimate to look at the connection between the 2. I think your very right to ask that question. Clearly there's probably a difference to be made, if we're fiber optically linked in terms of the system that's recommended. In terms of the expenditure of the technology budget on the other hand, the 5 year program, the implementation of networking is not something that's OK, we'll do all we can this year, and if there is money left over, we'll do something else. If there were money left over that weren't being used, the implementation would proceed more quickly and we would accelerate the 5 year program and that's the way it's worded. I wouldn't look to the technology fund as someplace where there is necessarily extra money lying around for a phone system. It would rather be a question of balancing a phone system against implementation of computer technology.
Stutsman: Right if there were 3 votes to say that this was more important than moving the technology ahead.
Lacina: But the other advantage of going with the technology is if you lay fiber to the Health Department it's silly then to set up phone lines that duplicate that same service. You just load the fiber with your phone lines and you've got that one fast high speed connection.
Grove: That's a great point, as to right now all of your funds, I'll call it in the computer world, whereas a lot of those funds could put towards, and they're the same dollars, they're just in a different department, because I'm going to run voice over what your paying for data and at no charge. So take some of those funds, and I'm not telling you, you guys know how to do that, but if you look at them as 2 separate things, you will pay more for it, but if you look at it as a big picture and what can I combine, the 2 technologies of voice and data and video and everything else, then your costs all of the sudden remain the same but are put into one basket.
Lacina: Same theory applied when they were doing the work on all of the telegraphs and all of sudden Alexander Graham Bell came up with the telephone. You know the same lines, you just transfer everything, telegraph and voice on the same lines, instead of having 2 separate dedicated systems.
Grove: Right. Don't look at the 2 technologies as different.
Lacina: So to move forward then, we need to decide if we need a consultant to look at this, to do a needs assessment, one advantage of doing that would be, we tend to be criticized at times for example for developing a quote for equipment, say in the Road Department, something with a PSI of over 3,000 hydraulics, only one manufacturer Deer manufactures to those specifications and so you've eliminated Case and you've eliminated International and all of these others. A consultant could go out and look at the need and build a proposal which all could bid to, as opposed to if we try to do it ourselves, we may make an error and have some parameter that would exclude bidders. The other option would be to go with you guys to continue what you've given us and if we felt comfortable with that and it looked like it was going to meet all the needs, there wouldn't be that expenditure and proceed. I guess the question then is there a third or better option that we could also pursue?
Bolkcom: Are there other competitors that we'd want to have pitch us a system as well. If we're not going to have a consultant, do we want to just have one company pitch us a system or do we want to have it be more competitive?
Peters: You've had a lot of interest.
Stutsman: You had what?
Peters: A lot of interest from various dealers.
Grove: A lot of people can do what we've proposed today, in regards to networking, multiple buildings, doing a voice and data convergence, technology, you've just narrowed the field. Doing this building, people do it every day. When you start bringing the 2 together, taking advantage of facilities that are put into place, then you're in a different game and there's not as many people that can do it or have the experience in it, so yes, you've narrowed the field from a competitive standpoint.
Lacina: But ultimately that's our goal is to have a communications system that ties everybody together in all forms of media.
Grove: True. I guess a suggestion that I would make is I'd like to listen to what you're 5 year plan is. I'll put together recommendations that are not biased towards us, but I mean this is what we do. If you talk to a consultant, there are consultants out there that know as much as the person sitting down the hall about the communications systems. Put together some pictures and things like that that you can sit down with a consultant and say this is what we want to do and ask them for references. You know, who have you done this with? There's 5 or 6 consultants nationwide that are good at it. There's a million who have never done it before, but would love the opportunity to get into their first one.
Stutsman: Would we want to put this on then for next Tuesday for continued discussion about whether we want to go with a consultant, whether we want to go out for other proposals? Do a survey?
Duffy: Sally, I think this would be a good item to put on at the Department Head meeting so that they know what's going on.
Stutsman: Well...
Duffy: I think (inaudible).
Bolkcom: Not a bad idea.
Duffy: Uh-huh.
Stutsman: We were just...
Bolkcom: You want to wait...
Jordahl: Just a step towards a survey...
Stutsman: Yes.
Lacina: Could you give a similar presentation to them? Maybe a little more condensed, not so much on the contractual side, but on the feature side? The other thing is, to bring someone else in, you've taken the initiative to put together a proposal for us, which I really appreciate, very well done. For somebody else to come in now, they would definitely have to significantly beat you in feature or cost or something, because I'm not going to go with somebody that matches you. You've obviously done a great deal of work on this and did a good job.
Duffy: So has Carol.
Grove: We couldn't have done it without Carol.
Peters: Oh yes you could have.
Duffy: We can't do anything without Carol.
Grove: From a feature standpoint, you're not going to... If you look at ours or you look at a Lucent or you look at a Northern Telecom or Weintel or whatever. From a feature standpoint, you're not going to get a lot of difference. The difference is going to be the effort that's put forth in designing the system, getting the information from you all, putting it into the system so that you can get the most out of it. From that standpoint, that's where we excel.
Lacina: And our comfort level with the individuals being able to deliver.
Grove: Yes. I guess in regards to doing the same presentation, I don't know if this is the right group or the Information Services group, but I'd be more than happy to show a technology presentation that does all of this and show you what a network voice-data system would look like.
Lacina: That would be more meaningful.
Grove: Give you some examples, give you some references of different County government facilities; you say that you can't get onto the ICN, but you could jump on Jerry Palmer's fiber or jump on his frame for a small price, I'm sure. And be on it.
Lacina: Or South Slope or hopefully the University or something.
Grove: Or McLeod. We've got fiber running through here and we run the ICN. So there are other advantages to creating a hybrid network versus sticking with one type of a stream.
Stutsman: Carol, when's that department head meeting? Is it in December?
Peters: December, I just made a note on it. December 2nd.
Duffy: That's the one that...
Peters: That's the one where you're going to meet with elected officials at 1:30 and then elected officials and department heads at 2:00.
Lacina: See, I think it's a good idea to do that, as far as showing a potential, but from our standpoint of making a decision, I think we almost need to keep things moving too.
Stutsman: Oh, I guess I think that they, and almost maybe invite elected officials and department heads Tuesday too, or do we want to do a survey with them beforehand?
Bolkcom: What would the survey look like? Do you want voice mail? What other questions... I guess we would want some guidance on that from somebody. Because I think we should keep moving also. But I think Steve's point earlier of how we're going to pay for it is really the question.
Lacina: How did we do it with DHS? We went out with that consultant, but we gave them some direction as far as proceeding.
Peters: Actually...
Lacina: When they did their assessment?
Peters: Actually what he did was if I remember correctly, he visited with the employees up there to see just exactly what it was that they needed to have. Cheryl, then I visited some with him also, so that he could coordinate that with our Centrix Plus system.
Lacina: Did they give us documentation on those reports that we could then share that, would at least be an overview of (inaudible) employees needed?
Peters: I did not see that. What I did see was the responses from the different vendors.
Lacina: The features that they...
Peters: Cheryl... and these are just things that I can remember off the top of my head. Up there what you were trying to do was to coordinate and they have what used to be referred to as a PBX system, you have an attendant. Also, they wanted to have was the voice mail capabilities outside the main number, so that, OK, a client calls in and they want to talk to Cheryl, the attendant can say, I can take a message or I can forward you to her voice mail. But Cheryl also needed, when I say Cheryl, I mean her employees up there, needed the capabilities of accessing the voice mail without having to go through that main number.
Bolkcom: Makes sense.
Stutsman: Well why don't we put this on for next Tuesday for continued discussion and then be thinking about whether we want to go with an outside consultant, open it up for other dealers, whether we just want to do an in-house survey ourselves, or if we just want to do voice mail for the Board of Supervisors office and we continue study for the rest of the system.
Jordahl: What about the department heads, Sally? Do we invite them to the meeting next Tuesday? Or do we need some sort of a survey?
Stutsman: I just wondered if it would be a little premature to invite them next Tuesday. Maybe we need to get our act together a little bit more about what direction we want to go in.
Bolkcom: We might want to invite Cheryl specifically as somebody's that gone through a new system.
Stutsman: To help us decide...
Jordahl: And Jean Schultz to make sure that we've got...
Bolkcom: And Jean.
Peters: I was going to say definitely...
Bolkcom: The networking thing needs to be better understood by us.
Stutsman: To me, this is just an introduction.
Bolkcom: Right.
Stutsman: And I need to get a little more thought together and information and resources that we...
Peters: Yes, and I have to be honest, when I was speaking about a new phone system, I never envisioned that you would be so ready to roll. I was envisioning like setting money aside for a few years.
Stutsman: Well and that may be what we end up doing...
Peters: I just didn't want you to think that I was trying to push for a new system all in one year.
Stutsman: Well I think we're all trying to think ahead and where we need to go with this.
Lacina: Well under the agenda item then for next Tuesday... Should we put item A, possibility of a survey? B, input from Cheryl and Jean as to their systems. C, quick overview minus the financial side, because the department heads are going to worry about functionality and not the other portion. Just give us real quick, and what other areas should we cover so that we've got...
Stutsman: Do we want a consultant.
Lacina: Oh, consultant, that would be anther topic. Then if we get through those areas, we should be...
Bolkcom: Did Health go through a consultant? Did Health do a new phone in the last few years?
Peters: Yes.
Bolkcom: We might want to invite Graham over.
Peters: Well I don't know if they... It's been a while back.
Bolkcom: Yes.
Peters: Yes.
Duffy: Four years.
Peters: And I'm sorry Joe, I didn't...
Bolkcom: We might want to invite Graham over to...
Peters: OK.
Bolkcom: People that have done a little bit of this might be helpful to us.
Duffy: OK, now we're inviting some and not inviting the others. I have a real problem with that.
Lacina: Well the ones that have looked at systems though might be able to give us tips.
Duffy: Yes, but still we're inviting the other department heads and I don't know...
Stutsman: Well, it's a public meeting, Charlie. Anybody can come to the meeting if they want to...
Duffy: Well, yes, but I don't think...
Lacina: Open to all departments.
Duffy: A department head and didn't have a special invite. I don't think it... This is a big thing and if we're going to do it, we want to...
Stutsman: Well, but we're not making any decisions, I think we're just trying to get more background information.
Lacina: Input.
Stutsman: Input.
Duffy: Well I think you'll probably have some, maybe they'll show up anyway.
Stutsman: Well that's great.
Jordahl: I think there's a difference between and invitation that says, hey we're going to be discussing this, not really making decisions here, but if you're interested and want to attend and give some input on this. It's kind of different than calling a department heads meeting and putting it on the agenda.
Stutsman: Yes, because I just think it's a little premature yet. I just don't think we're quite there yet.
Duffy: Well, but we just mentioned some. What's wrong with just sending like Jonathan said, this thing is... We haven't cut the stone yet, just for... But I do have a problem with some...
Stutsman: Well I think the ones we talked about inviting would be resource people, people that have gone through this, they could help us.
Duffy: Joe said that the Health Department...
Stutsman: They've gone through it.
Bolkcom: They've put a new phone system in, Charlie.
Duffy: Well I'm against this, to tell you the truth, unless every department head and elected official, this is a big thing. I think and just tell them that we're just starting the process and get them involved, and if we're going to leave some of them out, they will know I guess.
Lacina: Well they'll all be included in a department head meeting.
Peters: Yes.
Lacina: But before we go into that...
Duffy: Well we're talking about it and I can see it in the press now.
Lacina: Before we go into that department head meeting, we do need to know what we're talking about and I think that's what our meeting Tuesday is going to...
Duffy: What's it going to hurt to have the members if they want to come and department heads and elected officials, there's going to be some of them with a special invite evidently and the rest of them not.
Bolkcom: Obviously, they can come if they want to come. They may have more important things to do than sit through a meeting here when we're kind of just kicking around some ideas, so we should just leave it to them to attend.
Duffy: Well then, I don't think we should invite anyone.
Bolkcom: Well there's a few people that have more expertise, because they've implemented systems within their departments.
Duffy: If they've got more important things to do, then I'm sure that they'll do it. But I still think that we don't want to get into it again, (inaudible) a while back making decisions. It's all cut and dried before we (inaudible), I don't want to get in...
Bolkcom: Well as Sally pointed out, we're not making decisions, we're trying to educate ourselves about the options.
Duffy: OK, then I can do this, I'll probably call myself and say...
Stutsman: I think that's fine.
Bolkcom: You're free to do that, Charlie.
Stutsman: And then they can decide whether they want to come. It's an open meeting, we're certainly not excluding anybody, but we're just saying, we're just certainly not to the point of making any decisions. I would hate to mislead department heads, thinking that we're going to put in voice mail next month when we're still in the beginning stages of talking about this.
Duffy: That's why they should be here, Sally.
Lacina: Well I'd like to hear from Cheryl and Graham as far as any problems that they foresaw before we go to the department heads, because we may decide that based upon what they tell us, we want something different.
Jordahl: Well let me chime in with Charlie that as we're hearing this, that we're going through a process of decision-making. We're gathering information that pertains to the ultimate decision and as we receive that information, we're moving some distance towards, OK, I understand that, yes that's affordable, yes that makes sense, yes that's something we want that fits with our networking proposals... OK, now let's present this to the department heads. At that point, it's more... we're not asking the department heads should we do this, or what do you think about, we're asking them, we're telling them, here's what we're going to do, more or less. We may configure that as how would this affect your department, but we're not bringing them along in the process. I guess there's... Just as we post agendas for meetings, the public can attend them, it makes sense that if we're going to do something that affects all departments and we're thinking about it, that making it specific...
Stutsman: But we haven't even gotten to that point of which departments. We may just decide we're going to do it just for the Board of Supervisors. I just think it's premature, but you certainly can invite them and...
Lacina: In which case, I still want to hear from Cheryl to see if she feels that what they did was right.
Stutsman: Right.
Bolkcom: Right, I agree.
Jordahl: On that same context, we could hear from department heads that hey we have a problem that needs to be addressed where we're not hearing that. Now if we decide to go just voice mail for ourselves, we haven't had that input.
Lacina: We haven't even gotten to that point, Jonathan. We are saying we are going to do a survey, at some point we're going to take steps. Do you want to go in and do a meeting kind of like on the budget presentation and not know what you're saying, I guess is the question. We need to do a little homework before we rush out there and we start saying we're going to put together a survey... Do we even know what we want in the survey yet. Do we know what their response back. We're just trying to do our homework first, that's all.
Welsh: There are some questions which are asinine to ask from my standpoint. Do you want voice mail, like Joe was saying, I think so. I think Joe knows everybody is going to say yes, because it's more convenient for a person. I can't imagine you're going to get no's.
Lacina: I think we all want a real person to be on the other end of that phone when somebody calls from the outside. Then at that point we can go to technology, but we still I think all want that personal touch and...
Welsh: That's what I think about...
Stutsman: Well, would we rather have a work session and invite all of the department heads in?
Duffy: Yes.
Lacina: I think we're having more meetings than we need. I think just do it Tuesday...
Bolkcom: Well there is that balance thing on that point.
Lacina: Invite everybody if they wish but I'd like to specifically hear from Graham and Cheryl, give us some input.
Stutsman: All right, I think there's 3 people that want to proceed like that and certainly, if other department heads want to come, they are certainly welcome to...
Bolkcom: Right and next Tuesday, when our thinking has evolved a little more, the work session may be the most obvious next thing.
Stutsman: OK.
Lacina: Can we put on the agenda that all department heads are invited if they wish to attend.
Bolkcom: Sure.
Stutsman: That we're just going to have a discussion about the phone system.
Peters: So, OK, but did you want a memo to go out or Charlie did you want to call them?
Duffy: I suppose I could call everybody, but if some are having special invites, I think the rest of them should.
Bolkcom: Maybe a memo from the Board would be the clearest way to communicate with the department heads, instead of having one member of the Board call everybody.
Peters: OK. A memo.
Duffy: Maybe we don't...
Bolkcom: So that the communication is clear from us about what we're interested in.
Stutsman: All right, that we're just discussing...
Peters: Be glad to.
Stutsman: And invited too, who have had some special experience in working with phone systems. OK, thank you. Thank you very much.
Lacina: Good presentation.
Bolkcom: Thanks a lot.
Stutsman: It was very informative.
Grove: Thanks.
Stutsman: The start of a long discussion so...
Duffy: OK, I thought you did great.
Stutsman: OK, I had put on the budgeting process. I'm going to postpone that until next Tuesday after we meet with department heads and elected officials with out strategic planning. Reports? Let's see, Steve you had...
Lacina: Yes, that's fine.
Stutsman: Charlie are you done with your report?
Duffy: I wasn't done, but I'll just save this until Thursday.
Stutsman: Jonathan, did you have anything?