Riverside trustees voted unanimously on July 21 to extend the village’s contract for paramedic services with Public Safety Services Inc. (PSSI) for three more years, a deal worth just over $1.4 million.
The village’s single biggest contract with any outside firm, trustees agreed to forgo the competitive bidding process and accept the agreement, which was negotiated by Village Manager Kathleen Rush and Fire Chief Kevin Mulligan.
PSSI has performed paramedic services for Riverside since 1993.
“We’re paying less money per paramedic than neighboring communities and getting more services,” Mulligan said. “We would not be able to secure through a competitive bid process the price we’re getting with this contract.”
The vote to rehire PSSI ends a process that began in early 2008, when Mulligan asked the board to consider waiving the competitive bidding process in order to renew PSSI’s contract. In April, trustees Jean Sussman and Thomas Shields urged Mulligan to justify that request, since it represents the largest vendor contract for the village.
In response, Mulligan produced a report that showed Riverside’s cost per paramedic ($73,873) was lower than four nearby suburbs, including Berwyn, Lyons, LaGrange Park and Western Springs. North Riverside had a slightly lower cost at $72,166, but performed fewer tasks than in Riverside.
Mulligan said that PSSI paramedics in Riverside are also used for firefighting, administrative tasks, fire inspections and maintenance.
“That started under Chief [Anthony] Bednarz and I’ve continued that because we have no other full-time employees,” Mulligan said. “It’s an attempt to maximize our resources.”
Two PSSI paramedics are on call 24 hours a day. Riverside has six paramedic assigned to it, working a one day on, two days off schedule.
Mulligan also pushed for renewing the contract to avoid a competitive bidding process that he feared would force the village to accept a low bidder who provided unsatisfactory service.
After Riverside voters passed a referendum asking the village to provide paramedic service in the early 1990s, PSSI was hired for a 10-month contract until the end of 1993. Mulligan said that the company provided good service, but the board decided to bid a three-year contract for 1993-96, which ended up going to Metro Paramedic Services, the low bidder.
Mulligan said that the village spent $20,000 alone training its paramedics to navigate Riverside and that the experience was not a good one overall.
“We learned a lot not just to take the lowest bidder, because we can’t afford for them not to be a responsible bidder,” Mulligan told the board on July 21. “We learned from our 1993-96 experience how to examine the competitiveness of the proposals. In 1996, we had the best vendor and we stayed with them.”
The new three-year contract, which expires Dec. 14, 2011, includes a cost increase of 1.9 percent in the first year and 3.5 percent in the following two years. Those modest increases also helped convince trustees to go with the negotiated contract with PSSI.
“I was skeptical in the beginning,” Shields said. “I also didn’t expect to have a contract with those kinds of increases. This is easy to support.”