By Lyle Moran
Lowell Sun
LOWELL, Mass. — The City Council unanimously passed a motion Tuesday night calling on the city administration to report back on how city businesses and property owners forced to buy new fire-alarm boxes from only one company can recoup some of their costs.
When the city switched to a new wireless fire-alarm system in 2009, the Fire Department told owners of residential buildings of 13 or more units they had to purchase a radio box connecting to city dispatch from the company that installed the system.
The Sun reported last week that then-Inspector General Gregory Sullivan determined in 2011 that the city’s arrangement with East Coast Security Services of Salem, N.H., for the boxes “completely obliterated price competition.”
“The businesses are not happy and I understand why,” Councilor Rodney Elliott said Tuesday night. “One company was given a monopoly.”
Sullivan also determined that the $2,475 price East Coast was charging for the boxes for non-municipal buildings was far more than $1,100 the company paid to obtain the boxes.
“This was not advantageous for the businesses and the citizens of Lowell,” Sullivan wrote in an Oct. 2011 letter never provided to the City Council by City Manager Bernie Lynch’s administration until after The Sun’s report last week.
“The low bidder put the bid low and their losses onto the back of the business customers,” City Councilor Rita Mercier said Tuesday night.
East Coast was the lowest of six bidders in 2009. Its price of $77,849 included the installation of the wireless-alarm system, including setting up a system to receive the alarm signals in the city’s dispatch center and installing 68 alarm boxes on city buildings.
Sullivan said the alarm boxes for non-municipal property owners should have been procured under a public-bidding process and not a “no-bid” agreement.
Elliott, who made the motion Tuesday night about assisting impacted businesses, said the city should look into refunding the fee property owners have paid the city to have their alarm boxes monitored. That fee is $275 according to city documents.
Fire Chief Edward Pitta defended Lowell’s arrangement with East Coast as the “industry standard.”
In Tyngsboro, property owners who want to tie directly into the city’s dispatch center have to go through Mammoth Fire Alarms of Lowell, a company that protested Lowell’s arrangement with East Coast, said Pitta.
Tewksbury property owners have to go through LW Bills of Georgetown for fire alarms connected to dispatch and pay far more than they do in Lowell, according to Pitta.
The chief said communities typically go with one company to connect alarm boxes directly to dispatch so that if there is a problem, the city only has to deal with one vendor, not six or seven parties.
Councilor Ed Kennedy questioned Pitta on why the Lowell Housing Authority got some boxes for less than other business owners. According to Sullivan, the LHA got 11 boxes at the reduced cost of $1,100.
Pitta said it was because some of the LHA’s buildings were inadvertently included in the city’s original bid package and they only got 6 boxes at the reduced rate. He did not think it was a “sweetheart deal” as Elliott had charged.
Some local businesses have told The Sun they had the opportunity to buy similar boxes to East Coast devices for less than half the price, but City Solicitor Christine O’Connor said those boxes would have provided indirect connections to dispatch.
She praised East Coast for keeping its price steady since it became the city’s vendor for the new alarm system.
Both Elliott and Mercier said they have more questions, and they want to ask Lynch about the fire-alarm bidding-law violations at a future date because Lynch was absent last night.
“I think he should have been here and he is not,” Mercier said of Lynch.
Mercier made a motion to have a special meeting this coming Tuesday on the issue, but she only gained support from Elliott and Kennedy.
Mayor Patrick Murphy and Councilors Kevin Broderick, Marty Lorrey, Bill Martin, Joseph Mendonca and Vesna Nuon voted in opposition, with Martin saying the matter can wait until a regular meeting.
The next City Council meeting will be Sept. 11.
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