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Session 1313, Minutes Page 3 August 16, 1982 Mrs. Metcalfe pointed out that the Council was really not qualified to discuss the technical merits and try to assess which system was superior, and that the only way to reach an intelligent decision was with the help of a technical consultant. She said the Council had the choice of relying on the advice of the City Manager, which was based on input from the TI people, REJIS and an independent, unbiased consult- ant (Andy Arizala of the Arizala Corp.). She felt the best route was probably to rely on the outside consultant. If the Council was not comfortable with that choice, then it should commission another consultant's opinion. Mr. Levy concurred with Mrs. Metcalfe's comments and assessment of the situation. However, he didn't feel the basis of the discussion was necessarily based on techni- cal knowledge of this particular system. It was his understanding that Mr. Arizala was asked to evaluate the recommendation made by REJIS and TI to purchase a second mini-computer like the first one, and based on the information available, Mr. Ari- zala found nothing wrong with the recommendation. Mr. Levy said that was different from starting at the outset to identify options for the committee to look at so that alternatives could be developed. The alternatives given Council when the recommen- dation was made to purchase the same TI system were not really alternatives, in Mr. Levy's eyes, particularly when such a large investment must be made. He thought one of the problems may be that there was no staff person who really understood computers, and perhaps it was now time to hire someone, noting that it might very well save the City money. Mr. Lieberman asked if there had been a bid from DNOS, and also, whether or not there was information on the computer which was not necessary and could be deleted. Mr. Ollendorff said that had been reviewed, but the capacity, in terms of memory, was not the problem. He said the present system's capacity was not overloaded, but the system was overloaded in terms of the number of programs on it. Mayor Mooney asked if staggered scheduling could be used so that it was not necessary to run sev- eral programs at the same time. Mr. Ollendorff said that most of the programs must be run during daytime hours. He pointed out that in the study that was made prior to the administration's recommendation, a large amount of time was spent trying to analyze the system's problems. When TI and REJIS finished the study and it was given to Mr. Arizala to analyze, his main concern was whether or not the problems had been correctly identified. Mr. Arizala suggested that several tests be made which would confirm or deny that the problems had been correctly identified. Fol- lowing that, he reviewed the report and recommendation, and concluded that the rec- ommendation was correct and that it made no sense to purchase a new kind of system. Mr. Ollendorff said that Mr. Arizala also checked into the DNOS system with TI peo- ple from another region, and reported that he would not recommend it to the City at this time. Mr. Lieberman asked whether the administration had evaluated the need for the infor- mation being gathered by the computer, and its cost-effectiveness. Mr. Ollendorff said he felt that everything now being run on the computer helped in the efficient operation of the City, and that specific dollar savings could be substantiated. He noted that the City was accomplishing things on its own computer which it formerly paid a private company to do at much larger cost. He added that the City was col- lecting three times as many parking ticket fines since this function was computer- ized, and there were other computerized procedures from which the City benefited. Mr. Adams concurred with Mr. Levy concerning the desirability of having a person on