Assembly Takes Issue With School Technology Agreement

Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
On Thursday, the Kodiak Borough Assembly unanimously failed a resolution that would purchase computer hardware for the Kodiak High School renovation and expansion project. Assemblyman Aaron Griffin was especially against the sole-source contract with Integrated Logic, LLC, of Palmer, Alaska.
“I am not comfortable with forwarding money to the school district for this specific item.”
Griffin’s issue with the company came when he started doing his own research and comparing prices on equipment Integrated Logic listed in the agreement.
“And I got through the first 15 items, and I’m going off of GSA, federal government GSA pricing, which is horrible anyway, and these prices were horrible compared to federal government GSA pricing. I’ll take line item 10, it’s for servers and the list price for these are $6,500, and there are 15 of them on this single page alone. And I was able to find them freely on GSA for $4,308. Same exact item, same exact part number from cisco. I mean a single line item, that’s a $10,000 savings from a single line item. And there are three lines of the same exact thing, that’s $30,000 that fast.”

Griffin said the thing that bothered him the most was that those oversights got as far as the borough assembly.
“It should never have gotten to the assembly with this kind of gross misuse of purchasing. And that is exactly what I see it as. It borderlines on wrongful and, I’m sorry, it really makes me upset. It’s about as negligent as you can get when you look at purchase orders.”
Griffin said there is only $2 million in the high school budget for furniture fixtures and equipment, and half of that would have gone toward the sole-source agreement with Integrated Logic.
“It’s ridiculous to me that this would be brought and it takes an assembly member to find it and to do the research that somebody at the purchasing level, who understands it, who runs the system, should be finding. So no, I’m not going to vote for this and I won’t vote for it at the next meeting either.”
Staff also recommended that assembly members not vote in favor of the resolution. During the meeting Acting Borough Manager Bill Roberts said the borough attorney pointed out that it does not meet borough code.
The assembly voted 7-0 against the agreement, which totaled $978,876. Roberts said the agreement will most likely return to the assembly during its next work session on August 29.