Ridgewood stands to save by changing phone service firms
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
The Record
RIDGEWOOD — The village would end up saving money by replacing its longtime telecommunications support firm, which is owned by a Ridgewood councilman, with a company that has bid for the work, it was revealed at last week’s meeting.
The council will consider a resolution next month to hire Pequannock-based Entel Systems to provide maintenance and service to the village’s Toshiba phone system.
The bid from Entel for all services came in under the rates that had been charged by Councilman Thomas Riche’s firm, Extel Communications, Manager Ken Gabbert said.
Entel’s $85 hourly rate during normal business hours is $3 an hour less than what the village was paying Extel. On Sundays and holidays, Entel’s service calls would run Ridgewood $48.50 less an hour than the rate charged by Extel.
Riche did not comment as the council discussed the bid last week.
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So it’s $3.00 per hour less…..and only one firm submitted a bid. Guess we weren’t getting screwed. Apologies are in order.
Don’t forget…..if I were bidding… I would make sure my bid was $3.00 per hour less than what was currently being charged.
Remember folks, there were several documented instances in which Riche did not charge the VOR for services provided. Also, it has not yet been determined whether Tom charged the maximum authorized rate on all occasions. So we may have been getting a better deal from Tom in the long run.
Obviously the one bidder would easily have been able to find out what the Extel prices were, and from there to underbid just to look good. Let’s also remember the countless times that Extel provided FREE, immediate service as well as equipment. Mr. Richie deserves an apology, a sincere statement from the mayor, deputy mayor, and Ms. Hauck, acknowledging their incorrect, misdirected inappropriate attacks on him.
Here come the Riche supporters trying to explain away his screwing the town all these years! Nice try Tom and Extel employees but the truth is now known, no amount of damage control will fix this.
Riche never “gave” the town anything! He even charged the town travel time in his billing. For over 15 years he milked the Village and he got caught.
This is untrue. He did an enormous amount of work for which the Village was never billed, and provided equipment at no charge as well.
Yeah and Hauck never gave Valley hospital any money and Megan Fraser never gave Hauck any money for her campaign. Riddle me that one #4 & 5
This whole event and the way it has unfolded made me think we’ve really returned to a level of nastiness not seen Mayor Pfund used to screw things up.
Mayor Pfund and Aronsohn never screwed up as bad ansd as often as Killion did