Running an office in Santa Monica is rarely, if ever, cheap. Indeed, even Santa Monica City Hall is not immune from making big expenditures when it comes to maintaining office space, as the City Council approved last week nearly $1 million in expenses for a color copy machine and consulting services for new office furniture.
City Hall will pay Xerox Corp. $346,020 during the next five years to lease and maintain one color copy machine.
The copy machine would be used at the Print Shop and, according to City staff, provide internal printing and bindery services to City departments.
City Hall’s current lease on one of the two color copy machines was set to expire.
“On average, the Print Shop prints over one million pages a year of which over 800,000 are color pages,” City staff stated.
As part of the vendor selection process, City Hall received six bids from vendors to provide a new color copy machine.
While Xerox was not the lowest bidder, City staff stated, the machine it offered came with a myriad of specifications that would allow for great productivity and overall time savings.
Council members also authorized the City Manager’s office to enter into an agreement with Western Office Interiors to provide Knoll furniture and procurement services for three years.
The approved contract was for $620,000.
“The City maintains approximately 170,000 square feet of municipal office space (leased and City-owned) dispersed in one primary and multiple satellite offices. There are approximately 2,000 full time and 500 temporary City employees,” City staff stated. “Office modernizations, moves, staffing changes, and normal wear and tear drive the need for furniture procurement and consulting services.”
City staff stated the City Manager, the Planning and Community Development and Finance, and the Public Works offices all have pending or recent furniture requests.
“These orders vary in scope and size from two to eight work stations,” City staff stated. “Additionally, a remodel of City Hall Room 110 is anticipated which would require approximately ten work stations. The amount of procurement services would vary based on City needs and funding which are difficult to predict in the long term.”
According to City staff, furniture procurement and consulting needs typically apply to workstation reconfigurations with existing or new furniture, new workstations in existing office plans, and comprehensive office remodel.
Both expenditures were unanimously approved Feb. 11 as a part of the Council’s consent calendar.
Also approved in the consent calendar: an agreement with Community Arts Resources for $100,000 annually up to five years to produce the Santa Monica Festival; the purchase of one mobile hazardous materials live fire training tanker prop system from Fireblast Global for $250,092; and, the awarding of a $20,000 contract to Dyett and Bhatia to provide additional work on the Zoning Ordinance Update, bringing the total amount of services provided from the firm to City Hall to $1,753,470.
