Good evening. My name is Helen Anthony. I'm the chair of the committee on finance. I'm calling to order a regular meeting on Tuesday, 11/19/2024 at 05:33PM. On that court, would you please call the roll?
Chairman Anthony? Present. Thank you. And I'd also like to thank from the city solicitor's office who's attending this evening's meeting. Karen Easter Gardner, our policy director, Jane Costa, our auditor, Thank you so much for coming.
Please begin. So before you tonight is the approval of a settlement agreement that includes exercising or making options in two contracts that the city holds now. The company is now called Mudaxo, so that's what I'm gonna call it, but you may have known it as Conduent or 12 other names that came in for it. This is a a long stated contract for camera speed and red light cameras and then parking ticket enforcement that the city has had for a long time. Elizabeth is here because there's a lot of she's had to do a lot of work around how this contract in the school board.
She's done an excellent job of working with vendor and challenges we've had. And that gives her she helped us negotiate the settlement so they can speak to some of the specifics I might be able to speak to. In short, this is a contract that was a big mess that had not been properly managed for a long time. And as we sought to put get our arms around it and manage it more actively, we found some inconsistencies with how they were doing us, which led us to seek resolution with the with the company for those inconsistencies. During that period of time, the company was sold.
Conway's book of business in these areas was sold to Medaxa, so that made it more complicated. So what's before you today is a settlement agreement that gives us credit for overpayments that were made by the city previously and aligned the two contracts for expiration in June 2026. Part of the challenge with how these contracts were set up many years ago is that they were kind of inexplicably intertwined, which meant that it made it very hard for the city to reprocure either of the services because if you wanted to go out for a new camera vendor, your parking violation service would be affected and vice versa. So by extending these, taking the credits, and aligning these upgrades, the city will be able to move forward with clean procurements for these services that MDAXO will be welcome to bid on for the contract expiration in June 2026. The other thing I'll note that has become clear as I've learned a lot about this is that the city historically used the then conduit product to as the data system for the operation of municipal court.
That is not what that system was meant for. It caused a lot of problems within court operations. And when Elizabeth got here, because she has so much experience, she was able to lay out for us what kind of system the court actually needed to operate. And so we started the implementation of that court case management system in all of our courts, which also makes us less reliant on this vendor for their data system, which has caused many problems for us in the past and which, when we go to reprocure it, will allow us to procure the actual services instead of trying to get this, like, hybrid camera parking court case management thing rolling. Particularly, and I'm gonna open it up.
I'm sure everyone does. So when you say that these two, I'm looking at the summary of the plan Yeah. That we have, does that need to Okay. This is from Tricia with regarding the summary of the. Is that an agreement?
I don't. I need you. Okay. Well, I'm just looking at this because Thank you. They have two They were always separate contracts.
Okay. But they referenced each other in their function. So it was, like, impossible to get one rid of one and not both of them, and they weren't on the same time period. So the way they were implemented left to this circumstance where the city previously was always saying, like, oh, we have to just extend this because we need it for the other contract. So what this does is align the terminations of both contracts within options that already existed in contracts that have been approved by the council.
We're not extending beyond contractual options that are available to us. It makes it clear that when those two when those options are extended, those two contracts will terminate, and the city will pre procure those services. And and but just a follow-up question. We have in front of us a settlement agreement. So the contracts are being extended under existing options, so we won't be voting on another contract at this point.
The options have already been exercised. They are not pending the execution of the settlement agreement. Okay. Alright. And so we will not have an opportunity to review those again before Correct.
Okay. Alright. I'm gonna open it up for questions. Yes. That'd be.
Thank you for the explanation, Courtney. I was gonna cheat, but I didn't even like it. So just to clarify, just wanna make sure I understand this. So we have to exercise the options in order to align the end dates. If we didn't exercise the options, we'd be in a weird thing where we would end one and the other one.
We have dollar. We're exercising the actions both as a term of the settlement and to align the end dates. Okay. And that's. Are we already getting prepared?
So if this ends in 2026, which is that's what I realized. Yes. When are we already getting ready for putting that bid back out and what that process will be? Yes. And have we considered whether or not we could just do this ourselves?
The camera technology? Like, if you had camera, like, do we need, like, do we need a conduit equivalent, or can we is this something that if we hire some folks to look at the back end software? I don't know. I have Yeah. It's mostly primarily, their function is the installation and maintenance of the cameras.
Whether or not we could do the ticket issuance, I think this is something we could explore. We did our before we got into all this, we did do an RFP for cameras, which had a terrible response. Yeah. We learned some things through that process. I am in favor of having municipal court administer as much of this as they feel comfortable given the confidence of the team that we have there now.
Yeah. And with the camera technology that is associated with these contracts is very old and outdated, so I think we have an opportunity to get new and better technology, but we'll see what the market brings. Okay. That would be something I'd love for us to explore with the because it seems like we do pay a lot monthly for this contract, and there's certain minimums that if we do accept complex stuff, we're already, like, checking on the back end and finding discrepancies or who's gonna give you enough. I
guess I would ask the solicitor for her opinion on it.
I can run through the terms and offer your opinion. Okay. So we are exercising two of the camera contract options through June 2026 and one of the parking motor vehicle contract extensions through 2026. Conwood is gonna make two payments to us totaling $450,000. One was $150,000 payment was already made.
The rest will be made within a month. And they agreed to reduce the fees on the camera contract by a total of $950,000, which is spread monthly over two years to, you know, essentially grant us for previous. We've already taken those credits in our. We also negotiated a bunch of improved service improvements. I will say, like, fully acknowledge tons of pain points associated with the quality of service provided by the three d vendor related to this contract.
And so we tried to address some of that in the settlement. You know, they're mostly high level, like, promise to work with us on our new court case management system, addition of upgrades for cameras, doc you know, updating business rules, things that they kinda should have been doing. I think I would ask Elizabeth to talk to this. The service and the expertise that's being provided under this new vendor is night and day to what we were receiving before. Part of that is because Elizabeth is actively managing them and is on top of the contract, but part of it is that the this is, like, what MDAXO does, whereas Conwood is, like, a company that is a hodgepodge of lots of different things, and I think didn't necessarily have the quality of service to provide us.
if you wanna comment on that. Yeah. So, again, like Brent said, night and day, we have a team now that's dedicated to our contract from the Boston office, so we aren't dealing with vendors who are in the middle of Indiana. When I have a pain point, someone from the Boston office is going to show up. They're going to walk me through it.
We're gonna come up with a timeline and a resolution in a timely manner. So what we were dealing with where even still intermittently while they're switching servers where we would have no services for a day or two days, they immediately addressed it. They actually offered us a credit for business loss during those times, and their team has just stayed on top of any issue that we've had. You know, cell phone numbers that we can actually get someone on the phone immediately. They'll walk us through it.
They'll send IT down. So the services that we're receiving this time versus this time last year, completely different team, completely different ballpark. They're actually professional. They have rendered the services that they've said that they're going to render, and it's it's making things a lot smoother. So I I don't have pain points with them right now that aren't currently being draft or active or worked on.
Yes. And, councilman, in my opinion, the settlement agreement is very favorable to the city of Providence. I can say that we worked on it very actively for six months down to the word, the comma placement clauses. We negotiated very heavily to have various clauses and terms that the vendor wanted to include that I that we typically don't have a surgery to US municipality, and they eventually came around. When it comes to claims, if we had pursued this outside of settlement, there's always a list that it's unclear what what would do.
And Conduit had a a a pretty strong counterclaim against the city. And and the reason I think this agreement is so favorable to the city is conduit really came around to wanting to further. And when I said conduit, I mean, Mdaxo wanted to especially after the contract was assigned to Mdaxo when they took over operations, they really wanted an opportunity to prove to the city that they're a better a better vendor and provide better service. So I can't speak to them, but they essentially they essentially ate their counterclaim in the interest of continued business relations with the city of Providence, and we are being credited for the full amount of what we claim we were overcharged. That's pretty unusual in a settlement agreement.
Usually, there's a discount involved, and we are getting no discount. We're getting the full amount that we claimed they owed us. So I do think the settlement agreement is very favorable, and I would recommend approval of it. And I'm
happy to answer any additional questions about it.
Just a clarity question. So was this agreement done with the folks at Conduit or that we were it says, like, I
guess, I'm like, oh, this is kinda
Wrong and one. Yes. It there are some there
are some complicated moments. Technically, I believe it is a three way agreement because I'm not privy to the type of relationship that Conduit and Medaxo currently have, but they are both signatories to the contract even though our future business relationship is only with Medaxo. And so it needed sign off from both Conduit, Medaxo, and the sign off from our department that the contract was worthy of presenting to the city council and worthy of approval in our legal opinion. So that took that added full layer of complication requiring so many levels of sign off. It was having there are a lot of books in jail.
But I think the final product is something that is really favorable and a good result, I'd say.
I just have some specific questions. So, you know, as you know, this is our relationship with condiment has been strained, and you certainly understand that because you have uncovered exactly the overcharging that has been done. But in terms of the specifics, the option to extend, I assume, is going to be extending the contract under the existing terms. Is that correct?
Okay. Subject to the terms of the settlement.
Correct. Subject to the terms of settlement agreement. But are we looking at, for instance, I'm just you need to be reminded on the specifics. What's the per ticket cost for the speed and, like, tickets? I mean, we had an issue way back when as to how much money they were charging for ticket that was issued.
Any of those things changing at all? No. Except we're getting the per month discount, which is about $33,000. Okay. So for fiscal twenty five, we're budgeting 1,800,000 in red light and 1,900,000 in speed for expense.
And so, you know, that's roughly we'll call that 4,000,000. The discount is we already took the discount, so that's a million on top of it. So let's say it's about 20%. And then who is going to be responsible for confirming, Elizabeth, this issue that the invoices are accurate? We will discuss them accordingly.
We review them in finance. Like, part of how we just determined this was through an internal finance review of their invoices. We've continued that. They get signed up for in finance, and then they're gonna go to Elizabeth as it relates to issues of business interruption. But all of that is now done internally at their center.
And will that be annually? Monthly before they get paid, we are. Okay. Which is what wasn't happening for, you know, nearly four years, which is how we ended up the most. And then we also had issues about, you know, new cameras or deactivating cameras where there's no activity in determining their location.
Yep. Is So we're doing we do monthly calls with them now that include police and traffic from DBW and Elizabeth where we're looking at camera functionality. They actually produce a monthly report to us that shows us how each camera is working. As Elizabeth said, they're much more responsive about fixing them, and they've actually upgraded cameras they don't have to because our cameras are so old. They're almost impossible to fix sometimes.
We do have some conversations to be had about cameras that are available to us that have not been installed, but that's at the city's direction. We are going the process of identifying places to install cameras is not complicated, but that's under Nate Urseau's team. And so we've been working with Nate and Elise and Elizabeth to determine, you know, if we want to install those games. But we're not being charged for cameras that aren't actively working, and there's a a contract threshold that we're able to compare it to as part of the monthly billing. Yeah.
Also, is there what are we charging now for a ticket? Do you know? It's 50 for speed
and and tracking varies depending on what.
Has that changed at all over the? Okay. I know that our owner may have some questions. Go ahead. It's done with my.
One question for me. And that is the monthly cost, Courtney.
You said it's at 39,000 a month, but we used to do a per camera cost where some were retrofit, and we paid one cost, and then we paid another cost for others. How does that play into the 39?
