Kudos to county officials for revising the library outsourcing review schedule, and for opening up the process more fully to public participation.

According to Dave Moller’s article in today’s Union (“Helling to lead rally against outsourcing of library services“) the county has made — apparently as of Friday the 20th — two significant changes in its very aggressive timeframe for considering bids for outsourcing library services.

County officials have decided to release the bid contents immediately, rather than — as originally stated — only after an evaluation period (possibly to include a recommendation to the Board), which might have left only a few days for the general public to consider the bids prior to a Board decision. Many of us felt that the original timing was grossly inadequate.

Dave Moller writes:

At first, county officials weren’t going to release the details of proposals to the public until they had been reviewed by an “evaluation committee” and a recommendation to the board had been provided. Library Systems CEO Frank Pezzanite said Thursday he couldn’t divulge what was in his proposal because he did not want to jeopardize its chances with county officials.

But late Friday, Chief Information Officer Steve Monaghan said the county wanted to be “as transparent as possible,” by putting both proposals on the county’s Web site today. The proposals are not competitive, and “there is no risk to negotiating a contract with them being public now,” Monahan said.

The article also mentions that the review committee originally had a tentative schedule to “deliver a contract recommendation in December so that services could begin in February.”

“I think it will be pushed back a bit from that to give time for the committee review,” said Assistant County Executive Officer Laura Matteson.

“That was a minimum time. It will most likely be longer,” before the committee makes a recommendation.

Note: The article gives the following web address (URL) for the bid contents, but as I write this at about 7:25 AM, I was unable to find LSSI’s bid online. I suggest continuing to check back throughout the day.

https://docs.co.nevada.ca.us/dsweb/View/Collection-56472

Note also: Madeline Helling’s rally against “privatization” is still set — so far as I know — for Tuesday (tomorrow) the 24th at the Rood Center from 730 – 9:30 AM. The threat of outsourcing/privatization still exists.