Contel Wins County Pact for In-House Telephones
Three years after scandal forced cancellation of a contract with Telink Inc., San Diego County supervisors on Tuesday agreed to a new deal with a different company to install an in-house telephone system for county government.
The supervisors voted unanimously to buy the system from Contel Business Networks Inc., rejecting last-minute pleas from AT&T; Information Systems and Pacific Bell.
The deal is expected to save county taxpayers about $4 million a year over the next decade, eliminating a $10-million annual phone bill by installing a county communications network, which will cost $6 million a year.
Contel and the county are expected to sign a contract by the middle of February and installation will begin immediately, said Richard Jacobsen, deputy chief administrator. The new phone system should be operating within a year, he said.
David Janssen, the county’s act
ing chief administrator, said Tuesday’s action ended a long process that began in January, 1983, when the county canceled its earlier contract with Telink Inc. amid a scandal that led to the indictment of 13 men, including two former county officials, on charges of racketeering, bribery and fraud.
Purchase price of the Contel system is about $12.5 million--roughly half the price of the Telink system. During the 10-year life of the Contel system, the savings over the Telink deal could reach $50 million.
“As the result of the actions of two county employees out of 11,000, we have spent almost three years and $600,000 ensuring a process of utmost integrity,” Janssen said before the board chose Contel. “We have accomplished that.
“But it is time to put Telink in perspective and behind us. It is time to make a decision.”
Board members, too, seemed eager to get on with a purchase that has been studied longer, and in more detail, than any other county deal.
Supervisor Brian Bilbray said he had reached a point of “information saturation.”
“The worst thing this board could do today is not make a decision,” he said.
“Every month we delay we are costing the taxpayers additional money,” Supervisor Leon Williams added. “I think it’s time for this board to make its decision.”
James D. Lakin, president of Contel Business Networks, said he was “delighted” with the outcome.
“We’re going to give the county absolutely the most advanced system of any county in the country,” Lakin said.
Contel’s system will convert about 8,000 county government phones from a Pacific Bell system to one that is owned by the county. Besides modernizing the phone system and lowering its cost, the change is expected to allow the county to transmit computer and video signals among its many offices.
Eventually, the system could enable the county to beam government meetings from the administration center on Pacific Highway to regional centers in Vista, El Cajon and Chula Vista. There citizens could see their elected officials on a television screen and be seen on another screen at the site of the meeting. They could ask questions and hear the answers.
In addition, the phone system will make most outlying residents’ calls to county employees local, rather than toll calls. A Fallbrook resident, for example, will be able to dial a number that is routed through a switch in Vista and then sent to San Diego, automatically and at no cost to the caller.
Still, officials from AT&T; Information Systems and Pacific Bell-Pacific Telesis, the two losing finalists, made one last stab Tuesday at persuading the board to reject the county staff’s recommendation that Contel be selected.
Ken Morrison, AT&T;’s account executive, argued that his company’s system, while more costly than Contel’s, would give the county more flexibility to grow and adapt to new technology.
And Lincoln Ward, Pacific Bell’s vice president for San Diego, disputed the financial comparison provided by the county’s staff and reminded the board that it had once before gone awry by being too trusting of its employees.
“If you had bought the first time the county staff recommended something, you would have wasted county taxpayers’ money,” Ward said, referring to the Telink scandal.
But then Ward said that all three firms were too close in price and technology for either issue to be the board’s main concern.
“What this really boils down to is that the issue is not price,” he said. “It is privatization versus should the county go into the telephone business. What are the risks, and what are the advantages of staying with a valued vendor who has been there for about 75 years?”
But board members, given the complexity of the issue and the detail of the negotiations, in the end stuck with their staff’s recommendation.
“After all the work they’ve done, it seems reasonable to follow the staff’s recommendation,” Williams said. “Otherwise there’s no point in having the staff do all that work.”
