By JACQUELINE DURETT
Correspondent
SAYREVILLE — The Borough Council is starting over with its vendor selection for the new emergency radios, despite having voted on a vendor at the June 13 meeting.
A continuation of the radio vendor debate dominated the June 27 meeting, at which the funding for the project was slated for memorializing. That formality, however, prompted significant infighting and a complete derailing of the vendor selection.
First, Mayor Kennedy O’Brien read a letter from David White, regional vice president for Motorola, the borough’s longtime vendor that was not selected for the radio purchase. The Republicans, V-COMM, a consultancy the borough hired and first responders who spoke on the issue all had been championing Motorola. However, for a variety of reasons, including a lower bid, the council selected West Berlin-based Tactical Public Safety, a dealer for the Harris brand of radios.
O’Brien and others have accused the Democrats of playing politics with the selection, as the Harris brand is one the county has chosen as well.
In the letter O’Brien read, White took issue with what he said were inaccurate statements council members made about its capabilities, as well as what he thought were more opportunities from Harris to submit revisions to its bid to come in at a lower price.
Infighting followed, with council members and first responders hurling accusations, with O’Brien adding that he was going to ask the Department of Community Affairs to investigate the matter. He said he felt the council had crossed the line of impropriety on the issue.
“It gets weirder and weirder the longer it goes,” he said, later adding, “This is such a zoo.”
“It’s very distasteful in the way that the council — in general, I mean that [in] a broad term — went about awarding this bid,” Sayreville PBA President Doug Gumprecht said.
“It’s actually shame on what’s going on, and it’s disheartening. And I really have no faith in some of the people up front. They are the people that are supposed to lead this town, and instead they’re steering us in the wrong direction,” Borough Fire Chief Vincent Waranowicz said.
However, the Democrats were not without charges of their own on the issue. Councilwoman Victoria Kilpatrick said she wanted to know why there had been such strong support for Motorola and did some research. She said she learned David Stern, V-COMM vice president, had previously been a program manager for Motorola, which she said he should have disclosed prior to V-COMM recommending the firm.
“I’m not saying anything is wrong, but I would have liked to have known that,” she said.
Kilpatrick also said both V-COMM and Motorola have ties to Gov. Chris Christie and his administration, reminding the audience that O’Brien recently was appointed director of the Department of Corrections’ State Use Industries by Christie.
“The only one that I see that would have anything vested here … it’s not me, maybe it’s you?” she said to O’Brien.
She said she suspected it was because of relationships that she was not always able to access the vendors to get the information she wanted.
“It seems to me like something isn’t right,” she said.
O’Brien said he was not aware of the consultant’s ties to Motorola, but did not know if that criteria would have been specifically excluded in the consultant search. He also pointed out that he felt a consultant having a background at an industry leader like Motorola was a positive.
A number of motions were made over the course of the meeting. One motion to table the memorialization of the radio funding failed — that vote went along party lines, with Democrats voting “no” and the Republicans voting “yes.”
However, a motion to table awarding the contract to Harris carried, with only Councilwoman Mary Novak dissenting.
A subsequent motion to vacate awarding the contract to Harris failed, following the same party lines as the motion to table the funding.
While the borough may still have Harris dealer Tactical Public Safety as its vendor in the near term, council members were slated to meet on July 11 with both companies to further review proposals.