City of Indianapolis
200 E. Washington St., Suite 2500
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Dear Mayor Ballard:
I write you today in my capacity as City-County Councilor for District 20 to request that you immediately suspend all negotiations and contract execution procedures with Vision Fleet Capital,
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| Councilor Frank Mascari |
The Master Fleet Agreement is a lease-purchase agreement for equipment – namely “energy saving vehicles” as identified in the Agreement. Any analysis that concludes otherwise is misleading and should be ignored. The Agreement is not merely a contract for “fleet management services” as the Agreement’s recitals suggest. The Agreement results in the city acquiring title to vehicles following the City’s payment of numerous “Rental” payments over time. Under any honest understanding, this constitutes a lease-purchase of vehicles.
The Department of Public Works is not authorized to unilaterally and without any authorized competitive process enter into a lease-purchase agreement for these vehicles. Such equipment must be procured by the “purchasing agent” of the City in accordance with competitive bidding practices outlined in Ind. Code §§ 5-22-7, 5-22-9, or other authorizing purchasing statute. G.O. Sec. 202-204 establishes the “Purchasing Division” of the Office of Finance and Management as the purchasing agency for the city and county. Because the Purchasing Division was not involved in this procurement and the procurement did not involve any competitive process under Indiana law, the resulting Agreement is not lawful, voidable, and should be abandoned immediately.
If you are unwilling to immediately cease negotiations and abandon the Agreement under the current procurement process, I will be forced to explore legal and procedural options to force your compliance. If you have further questions or concerns please call me...
Sincerely,
Frank Mascari District 20
Indianapolis-Marion County Council
200 East Washington Street T-241
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
5 comments:
After years and years of support- quiet or otherwise- for Greg Ballard's many questionable and potentially illegal gambits, Democrat Mascari writes a letter.
Better late than never, I suppose.
This firestorm over the revelation Mark Miles and other insiders are implicated in a political deal that stinks to high heaven is just the beginning- the surface of the corruption endemic to this City has hardly been scratched.
The sad fact is... how many other similar crooked or illegal or crony scams are we not aware of or not being informed of in the hard print press? I am willing to bet that number is legion.
Anon 10:04, Frank Mascari is actually one of the better councilors when it comes to opposing Ballard's insider deals and giveaway of tax dollars. Granted, he doesn't have stiff competition on the council.
i can tell you right now saying stuff like "If you are unwilling to immediately cease negotiations and abandon the Agreement under the current procurement process, I will be forced to explore legal and procedural options to force your compliance. If you have further questions or concerns please call me... "
Will only encourage Ballard to say FU and totally ignore him.
You don't get what you want in politics with major ultimatums and threats.
Anon 11:41, ultimatums and threats are exactly what was employed by RFRA opponents this past session. And they did pretty well...at least from a PR standpoint. I think though that strategy is going to come back and haunt them in the future. Those threats burned a lot of bridges.
I find it ironic and rather brash that Mascari calls out Ballard on something having to do with cars. John Layton, a Mascari buddy, has been not bidding out contracts for years, with no one doing anything about it. While on the subject of cars, John Layton has almost doubled the fleet of the MCSO, an organization that has no police powers post-consolidation. I see more MCSO cars around now than I do IMPD.
The fact is both political parties in Marion County do nothing more than figure out a way to screw the other, pure and simple. Neither represents the citizens at this point frankly.
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