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Council tables $66K increase request for fire incident-reporting software; asks for contract and usage data
Summary
Council members deferred action on the fire department’s request to increase spending for ESO incident-reporting and related services, citing missing documentation and large apparent increases; staff was asked to provide contracts, user counts and historical incident volumes dating to 2015.
Warren City Council on Tuesday tabled a request from the fire department to increase its multi-year spending authorization for ESO Solutions Inc., the vendor that provides incident-reporting and related software services.
Fire Department staff said the requested revision consolidates prior invoices and covers increased incident volume and user licenses. The cover letter in the agenda showed an increase in the first year from about $37,678 to $66,314.84; the fire department said the jump reflects a historical "true-up" after ESO reviewed the city's incident totals and user count and that the annual increase thereafter is driven by unit costs per incident and the number of users.
Several councilmembers pressed for more documentation. Councilmember Boiecki said the packet lacked detail explaining the increases and the practice of combining invoices; Councilmember Newnan asked for supporting contract language. Multiple members requested a clear accounting of historical payments, the contract terms that allow periodic adjustment, yearly user counts and incident volumes dating back to 2015.
After extended questioning, the council voted unanimously to table the item and asked staff to provide the ESO contract, ledgers showing prior payments, and data on users and incident volume so members could verify the proposed increase. The council set the item to return at a future meeting and directed staff to correct an apparent typographical error in the provided incident counts.
Why it matters: The software supports incident reporting, analytics and mobile use by firefighters; the requested increase would raise multi-year spending and is based on a vendor true-up tied to user counts and incident volume. Council asked for documentation to ensure transparency and fiscal oversight before authorizing the higher totals.
