City Approves Contract For Language Consulting Services
City Approves Contract For Language Consulting Services
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
City Approves Contract For Language Consulting ServicesFor individuals within the city of Warsaw who don’t fully understand the English language or speak it at all, getting a permit, using a public service or just participating in an activity might come with some barriers and trepidation.
On Friday, the Board of Public Works and Safety approved a $3,300 contract with Language Matters LLC to help the city have more effective communication with Spanish-speaking individuals.
Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer said, “You might notice that last year, when we approved the budget, we put some money in for translation services. And, we’re talking documents, we’re talking, it could potentially be a website. There’s a lot of translation that we are behind on, and these are services that we provide to our Hispanic community that need to be done. We need to get upgraded on. There’s a lot of work to be done.”
He said the city sat down with Language Matters about how to proceed.
“We don’t want to start just wholesale going through. We want to see what documents are most useful and most needed and needed to be accessed by the Hispanic community. We want to try and be smart about our dollars because these are expensive services and we don’t want to just start doing wholesale documents. We’re (not) doing documents that in two weeks will change and have to be redone, so what this is, this is basically a study that gives us priority to the most appropriate documents to be translated at a higher level and prioritized down,” Thallemer explained.
He said the city wants to use its dollars wisely on documents and other services that will be most impactful and helpful early on. Every city department probably has a need for translated documents, he said, especially those where permitting is done.
“It’s very important to get this done,” he said. The preliminary service will sit down with every city department heads and find out what the highest priority documents are that need to be translated first.
The Board of Works unanimously approved the contract.
Assistant to the Mayor Staci Young presented an agreement between Baker Tilly and the city’s IT Governance Committee.
Thallemer said, “This is a high priority from our organizational review from several years ago to establish an IT Governance and long-range plan. Most importantly, operate and create standard operating procedures that support that. So, that’s really the genesis of all the IT Governance requests that have been coming to this board for the last few years and I know this is a very important thing for them.”
Young, who is a member of the Committee, said the agreement came about after the Committee had several meetings with Baker Tilly to discuss their resources to do a project like this and their experience.
“We wanted to work with a firm to do this instead of trying to do it in-house because they can help us with best practices in the industry, like industry-wide, not just in government, looking at the IT industry,” she said. “They also can just help us cover liabilities. They know where some liabilities stand that we might not be aware of.”
Young said Baker Tilly will help the Committee through the process to develop standard operating procedures for IT for the city moving forward.
“So we have the infrastructure now. We have the network, the server system and all that. We’re starting to do a lot of other things with IT. We want to make sure we have a foundation set for that so we are protecting what we have and providing that consistency, and, at times, cost savings by making sure that we have something to kind of help chart the course for us moving forward,” she said.
Thallemer said, “The only thing I want to mention would be the importance of this. Again, I always go back to the cyberattacks and vulnerability of our network, and I am just thoroughly committed to making sure that we do everything we can to avoid that. I’m not sure it’s 100% avoidable, but if all of a sudden we have a ransomware attack and we haven’t taken the precautions and looked at best practices to avoid that, I don’t think that’s being responsible.”
He said it was “critical” that the city protect the information it has.
The cost of the agreement for development of IT standard operating procedures is $31,185 and it was approved 2-0.
In other business, the Board of Works approved:
• The purchase of the first batch of right-of-way parcels for the Anchorage Road project, as requested by Community Economic and Development Director Jeremy Skinner. They included $23,420 from Guy Moore Real Estate Holdings LLC; $4,580 from RNGC Properties LLC; $30,700 from DLC Home Properties LLC; $6,930 from Ramon Rodriguez; $1,950 from Gualberto Hernandez; and $11,700 from Ben and Sue Bradway. Total cost is $79,280 and funds will come out of the Economic Development Income Tax. Funds are 80% reimburseable from the Indiana Department of Transportation.
• Four contracts presented by Warsaw Stormwater Utility MS4 Coordinator Ryan Workman. Those included the 2022 document assistance contract with Christopher B. Burke Engineering LLC for an amount not to exceed $20,000; 2022 on-call services with Burke Engineering for an amount not to exceed $5,000; a 2022 virtual webinar assistance contract with Burke Engineering for an amount not to exceed $5,000; and the 2022-23 community education and involvement contract with Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams for an amount not to exceed $17,600.
• A change order for an increase of $5,150 from HRP Construction Inc. for McKinley Street storm sewer improvements; a payment of $70,666.87 to HRP Construction Inc. for the improvement work; and a second payment of $184,685.63 to HRP for work completed, as requested by Utility Superintendent Brian Davison.
• A change order for an increase of $1,271 from Kokosing Industrial Inc. for the wastewater plant expansion project. Davison said the change order has to do with programming.
“We have two big blowers that are providing air to various locations at the plant. We have an old one, and then the project included a new one, and the old one has a few different specifications so they had to do some additional programming within the controls to make it work together when they needed to,” he said.
• Accepting a $5,000 grant from the Richard, Evelyn and Jane Glover Charitable Endowment at the Kosciusko County Community Foundation for the 2022 summer concert series, as requested by Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department Recreation Director Stephanie Schaefer.
• The annual agreement with Anderson Property Management for maintenance of beds and urns at Central Park, as requested by Parks Superintendent Larry Plummer. The cost is $1,888.88 per month for nine months, or a total of $16,999.92.
• A contract for Zoll Expertcare Preventive Maintenance to perform preventative maintenance on the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory’s Zoll Z-Series cardiac monitors, as requested by EMS Chief Chris Fancil. The cost is $1,020. The WWFT was able to get the monitors through a grant from the K21 Health Foundation a few years ago and each one would cost about $35,000 if purchased today, he said. They are used on almost every medical call the WWFT makes.
• Thallemer also gave the oath of office to Redevelopment Commission members Jeff Grose, Tim Meyer and Jeremy Mullins. Oaths must be given by Jan. 31 and the Redevelopment Commission didn’t meet in January.
