 All right. Then on that note, I will go ahead and call the City of Essex Junction City Council special meeting for Monday, April 3rd, 2023 to order. Thank you all for being here and counselors. Do we have any agenda additions or changes for tonight? Recording in progress. No. Great. So with no agenda additions or changes, George, can you do me a favor? Give me a thumbs up if you can hear. Or Amber. I think we're muted still. All right. George, Amber, can you give us a thumbs up if you can hear us? Great. We can hear you. So I called the meeting to order, but you all missed it. So I did it, but you don't know about it. So now we will go into public to be heard. So this is a portion of tonight's meeting where if there are any members of the community who wish to bring something to our attention and is not on the agenda, now is the time to do so. For those of you using Zoom, please go ahead and raise your hand so that that way I can see how many of you would like to. And while we wait on that, anybody in the room, if you could raise your hand. Great. So none in the room. I am not seeing any in Zoom land going once, going twice, nothing out in Zoom. So we will move off of public to be heard and jump right into our main agenda item with the public hearing on the I on the IT RFP bid protest. As we get into this, I'd like to just go over a couple of key points here as this is a different process and what we typically have with our meetings. And just to make sure that everybody understands the way that this will flow. So this is a quasi judicial hearing in which there is a contested case where all parties will have the opportunity to present evidence cross-examine witnesses and presented by other parties. It will be the result of a written decision. We as a city council are going to be acting as judges to hear this case being brought forward. We have two parties that are here with us, the appellant being simple routes, the appellee, the city of S extension staff. Each party tonight will have 30 minutes to present their evidence and testimony at 10 minutes, five minutes and two minutes remaining. I will make sure to raise my hand and state how much time there is remaining. After the 30 minutes have concluded, I will state the time has ended in all testimony from the party must stop. Before we jump into witnesses testifying, I will ask very shortly for all witnesses to please identify themselves and I will swear all of you in as a group. As the appellant simple route will be going first. After each witness has testified, the opposite party will have the ability to cross-examine the witness which will not count towards a time limit. After cross-examination should remain respectful, witnesses should not be harassed and you should not be feeling attacked. After any cross-examination, the city council may ask questions of the witnesses which will also not count towards a time limit. All testimony cross-examination and evidence must be germane to the question of did staff follow the purchasing policy? All evidence being brought forward must be ruled admissible by the city council. After both parties have concluded and no more questions remain, both parties may have three minutes for closing statements. At the conclusion of closing statements, the city council may enter deliberative session with our city attorney to come to a conclusion. The ruling will be shared with both parties within 45 days as state statute requires. We have any questions from anybody before we jump into this, including council too. So with that, who will be testifying today? If you could please raise your hand. Okay, so we'll start with you, you can just start off with your name, where you're from. My name is Brett Johnson, I'm the president of Simple Route. Great. Okay, can you both stand and please raise your right hand? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury? Great, thank you both. And so as the appellant, Brett with Simple Route, if you want to come on up to a microphone, I think the one right in front of you is probably best. Give me a moment to just get my timer going here. You ready? I guess so. Take it away. So I'd like to thank the citizens for showing up tonight. You know, I'd like to thank the city council as well for taking up this issue. You know, my name is Brett Johnson. As I said earlier, I founded Simple Route in 2009. We are a managed service provider in South Burlington, Vermont. My firm was the only firm to find vulnerabilities in NEMRIC about four years ago as published by Vermont Digger in seven days. Those vulnerabilities left all of the property tax payments across pretty much every municipality in the state of Vermont. I believe there's maybe three or five or something that don't use the software, but both the city and town use it today. But those property tax payments were completely unencrypted on systems. And in addition to that, the city and town employees effectively all had their social security numbers in plain text. Every time a W2 report was uploaded, those were left for people to see. And so what this really meant was that anyone that went into any town that had a land record lookup system or something to that effect could have copied this data and had complete access to it. So we found this, we published it, we took it upon ourselves to notify every municipality that we found on their website that used this by hand, wrote letters to them, sent them, mailed them at our expense. So I think the most important thing to remember is that that's who we are at our core. And effectively I think it puts us maybe while having a slight conflict of interest in a unique position to sit here and tell you that we believe we are the most qualified firm to be here. So that being said, I believe the appeal that we wrote as well as the protest before it outline our case fairly well with respect to this issue. We did our initial walkthrough looking at what was here. The city manager had made a comment effectively, I think probably under pressure of the entire process but kind of dismissive of why the process was needed. And then subsequently arrived late to our initial one hour interview for the process. We were one of three finalists chosen for this. Those would be very petty reasons to be here in front of you today. It's not why I'm here. If I lost on price, this wouldn't be happening. We quite honestly often lose on price. We very frequently are not the cheapest bidder. But again, we usually draft, I think, the most comprehensive proposals in that process. So with that being said to hear that we lost on price was fairly shocking that we were actually lower than the bid that was chosen. And in fact, the highest bid was chosen, which while the city manager has, I believe, gone back and noted that with respect to the process, the purchasing policy, that there are professional service exemptions that allow the out on price. I feel that the price difference should be looked at and discussed. I think with respect to our qualifications, our firm backgrounds, we meet those pretty well. I, again, believe an independent review, particularly given those other pieces before it really would make a lot of sense. You know, I have, I believe a lot of questions with respect to pieces that I'll get into later with the city manager because that she's going to get to also testify and I'll get the question correct for that process. So she will be able to testify if she would like to. There is opportunity for cross examination. Okay. And if she declines to testify, will I still get to cross examine? No, if she doesn't testify and there is no cross examination. Okay. Well, then questions that I guess I would ask the city council to consider with respect to this process. The fact of the matter is that back in, I believe it was 2021, the city put forth a response on a frequently asked questions list. And I'll read from that FAQ that was posted on August 21 of 2021. And it reads, splitting the current town village unified administration into two smaller administrations may require creating new positions, but it will also eliminate some positions and costs. For example, the town of Essex Information Technology office currently has two full time employees with a total budget of $434,470. Such a large operation may be necessary to serve two governments, but estimates show that the city could provide excellent IT services for much less than the village current $182,477, 42% share of the town IT expenditures. Large size doesn't always create efficiencies. The trustees believe there are other significant costs incurred from operating a large unified administration that can be reduced or eliminated by separating from the town of Essex. So with respect to the costs, I think it's important to look at the actual costs being set forth. The IT department was actually specifically listed as an area where costs could be considered and where costs could be reduced. I would also like to ask, with respect to the process, how open approach came into the mix and whether the purchasing policy was followed with respect to their entry into a relationship with the city. The city manager described the initial project undertaken with the water department as a small project. Records on the city website show on September 2nd of 2022 that there was a $19,226.64 payment made to open approach for their project, which per the purchasing policy falls under the large purchase section and not a small project. There is no professional services exemption that I can find in the purchasing policy with respect to that. And so my next question that I'd like to pose to everyone present that I may not actually get to ask if there is no actual testimony from the city manager is whether or not the purchasing policy was followed and three quotes were obtained for that work. There were only three firms in the process for the RFP which were identified as local because I believe my three, I was one of the three and there were three firms left and we were told that only the local firms actually survived the initial cut. And so if that were true, it should have been possible to have three quotes for that work. And if it weren't, then the purchasing policy would have been violated, which was one of the reasons that was initially cited as why open approach was favored amongst the participants. Looking at the actual bids themselves, and again I have a highly redacted version, so my ability to really compare is somewhat suspect there. But looking at the bids, I think it's important to note that my firm included onsite coverage of support, unlimited offsite support as well. And so effectively even emergency support was included in our bid. Open approaches, which was the chosen firm, find the wording here for you. Open approaches bids specifically read, open approach will make onsite support visits if required in major production stopping events. So with that being said, there's two parts to the actual RFP that were requested. There's a project to actually split the two entities, and there's also ongoing service and support. And so if one of these bids only provides emergency work for onsite coverage, and the other one is all inclusive of that and cost less, then I question how that would be a more appropriate project outline, at least with respect to the actual recurring service piece. With respect to the actual project, the selected bid said that it would include replacement of the majority of core equipment. And per city manager Mahoney's admission in email, several of these devices are under active support and warranty. We were actually asked both by the town IT representative, Rob, as well as by city manager Mahoney after the fact, if we would support these devices as we walk through. This was also true with respect to the water department when we walked through there, because there's several Sophos devices listed there. So again, if we're looking at the actual design of the proposal, I question that design if we're going to replace a bunch of viable hardware as part of that, that worst case scenario. And I think that the city council as they deliberate this particular matter needs to take under consideration, whether or not selecting the bid that's chosen. Ultimately sends a message to future RFP respondents that we can effectively ignore price as a qualifier in this process and design something that itself is nothing more than a perfect exercise in dreaming something up. And then throw all that away later and say somewhere in our response that it's fine, it's a worst case scenario, and we'll figure out the details later. If we're not going to actually consider this based off price as a major qualifier and then look at the other pieces in terms of making our selection, then I think that it really damages the entire process. That's the entire purpose of the very purpose of the purchasing policy is at the front of the policy. And so while you can claim that there's a professional services exemption, and you can try to use that to justify decision, I think you still need to do it in the spirit of the actual policy that's outlined. Just trying to see if I have anything else to introduce. Yes. So in the actual process my firm put forward a different idea on how to split the city and the town infrastructure. Effectively the town representative Rob had mentioned that he ultimately wasn't sure and came back and the city manager city manager Mahoney had presented a response to that and a number of questions that related to this. Those were all questions that we had posed that they had taken given answers to and send out to all the respondents. The answer came back citing Alex Karen who was cited as a cybersecurity expert and ex professor of cybersecurity at Champlain College. I found out after the fact, after the actual award that Alex is actually an active town of Essex employee and was not identified as such in the process, which I believe creates a conflict of interest with respect to his actual decision to deny that particular path. With respect to that, I believe specifically and I point this out because the selected bid actually makes reference to this and tries to downplay that path is being being insignificant. But I make reference to it because I believe that the current approach to actually splitting them Rick is to take an exact duplicate copy of all of the data that the town of Essex has and bring it to the city of Essex junction. And in effect, the city of Essex junction will have all of the network data with all of the PII with all of the personal data for all the town of Essex employees for all the town of Essex citizens. And so effectively I believe it bears no less risk than that which is worth considering. And my firm was the only one to actually put forward an alternate path that might actually save money in this process. So I think that's worth considering. But finally my final point, you know, I think maybe more is a rhetorical point. You know, if we're to in the professional services exemption review qualifications as the major factor, then from my perspective, I kind of ask the question if my firm is not the most qualified at the table due to discovery. And if I'm covering the NEMRIC vulnerabilities, then what is it that actually makes the selected bid stand out as the most qualified bid. The fact of the matter is all the other firms that did this work for years before we entered the municipal market did not find this. And so effectively all of that data was at risk. And my firm founded upon entering the municipal space. So that's all I have to say, I mean, unless there's questions and I have further questions to ask. The only quick thing is do you have any evidence that you would like to have put forward into the record? I mean, everything I've cited is on the city website. Is there any reason to give you the things that I've referenced on there? If you'd like to, you can. If you don't, that's completely up to you. I'm happy to give you a copy of it. And so these are documents that you had already cited in advance? Are the things that you had cited during your testimony? Yeah, these are that I've either read from or quoted it. For instance, the $19,000 payment, that's all off the website. So if you were to search and narrow down your scope to the city website, you'd find that there. Yeah, for our record, if you're going to, if you do want something submitted, if you can just let us know what the title of the document is or describe it in some way. So that way we'd be able to identify what that piece, what that evidence is. Yeah, I'll give you these. I mean, is that. If you can just describe what these are. So like for each piece of paper or each document, if you can describe what that, what that document is. So I referenced the purchasing policy from the town of Essex village of Essex Junction. I referenced the FAQ that was on the websites under the page three. I mean, I don't know what the official title of this was, but it was effectively a frequently asked question posted or drafted on August 21 of 2021 specifically page three. And then I referenced a September 2nd, 2022 town of Essex accounts payable posting that was on the city website, specifically the invoice date of 825 2022 in the amount of $19,226 and 64 cents. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so then if there was nothing else to present. For your testimony or evidence. No, I think I've submitted everything I have on this. Okay. Regina, if you'd like as the appellee, if you'd like to cross-examine you may. If you don't mind just stay there. Regina, if you want to come up, maybe. Over that side. Wherever you can find a microphone that. If you don't have any cross-examination, that's fine. It's your choice. Okay. City council. Any questions? I don't know. George, I think you said you do. Yeah, I do. I mean, if you, if you, if you like to cross-examine you may. If you don't mind just stay there. Regina, if you want to come up, maybe. If you, if you, if you could just. I'm just a little, I just wasn't quite clear of the connection. You referenced a statement in 2021. In August, where we talked about. Separation and dividing the department. And. At that time, then village chair would be a hundred and eighty thousand. And I, and I, I kind of remember that statement and I. And I kind of remember that statement and I remember the reference to what we were talking about pros and cons of separating. But I'm not really clear. I didn't really make the connection between that statement and what the current issue is. And maybe I missed it or it was a little more nuanced for me, I couldn't quite get it. Could you go over that again? So yeah, I mean, yeah, so the statement that I made and the reason I bring up that statement that the city had put forth, effectively, I think, with respect to the award of IT services, it's important to consider the prior statements that you could save significantly more than what you were paying the town prior to the split. And that's the exact statement that's made there. Could provide excellent IT service for much less than the village's current dollar amount of the town's IT expenditures. And so I think with respect to the actual award, that number needs to be considered based on the prior statements of the city. Okay, I got it. And then I had one other question. So, and then in the contract we had with the water treatment plant and open approach, which was a $19,000 project I did. Your concern with that was that that project wasn't put out to bid properly or I couldn't quite follow either. Sure, my read of the purchasing policy is not that a bid is required, it falls under the large purchase section of that policy, which basically if there's a 10 to $40,000 expense, effectively requires three competitive quotes. Thank you, George. Raj, I see you had a question. No, not yet. I don't think. Dan or Amber? I don't know. You know I'm good. There's a no. I don't have any questions. So Raj, you have some hesitation? I don't, I always like... Just rereading a section of the purchasing policy. Give me a second. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm good. Okay. We have no other questions. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. I really appreciate it. Great. Would you like me to stay here or... If you just wanna go ahead, take a seat back at the audience, we'll have Regina come on up. Sure. And whenever you are ready. All right. Okay. So I just have some talking points in response to the appeal letter. The, in the appeal letter, the justification for the appeal is the effect that open approaches a proposal was the highest cost. I think my March 17th, 2023 response speaks to that and is already included in the packet. So I'm not gonna go through that but happy to answer any questions on it. Regarding the accusation that this process was a foregone conclusion, I can assure the council that this was a sound, fair and thorough process to secure the best vendor for the city. I was excited to meet the vendors who were interested in helping us with this important work. I have no recollection of saying something that would have undermined the entire RFP process and certainly had zero intention of that. Regarding being late to the interview, yes, I was late. I was meeting with Rick Gary, SXPD, to prepare for the council's first vicious dog bite hearing that we had that same night, January 11th. My position requires that I'm sometimes pulled in different places and have to respond to fires. We had an eight-person review committee and I was confident that that was, process was left in good hands. Regarding the schedule and process, just so folks are aware, this was a pretty involved process and I think we did a very sound and thorough review. The RFP was issued in October 17th. Site visits were scheduled in the first two weeks of November. Preliminary proposals were due on December 19th and five proposals were received. Dominion tech, open approach, simple route, soft sages and tech group. Staff reviewed, the staff review committee reviewed the proposals and invited three firms to move forward. Dominion tech, open approach and simple route. The interviews with the selected proposals and vendors were had and final proposals were due on January 30th. In between the interviews and January 30th, the staff did send out to the three vendors an updated inventory and information about how the migration approach that was offered by simple route was not gonna work for security reasons. And in addition to that, I just wanna clarify that it wasn't merely the IT folks at the town. The police department has a contract, an FBI contract that does not allow that level of sharing of information. We had, I could actually submit this as evidence what I'm reading from. I just realized it's probably helpful for you guys. Do you mind just describing what this is? Yep, this is just talking points that I put together. Thank you. So at the bottom of that first page of the talking points is the score sheet. So we had eight committee members, seven staff members from the city that are pretty good cross section of all of the different departments, as well as Rob, the IT director at the town. And you can see there that open approach scored the highest and ranked individually, ranked the highest among five of the eight committee members. So staff did that scoring individually and then we came together on Tuesday, January 31st. And after talking through the review criteria and scores, the review committee narrowed the list down to open approach as the preferred option and dominion tech as the second. Staff checked references on those two firms in case there was anything that would be of concern. I then made the final decision to move forward with open approach and asked them to start work on refining their scope of work and cost. The final price and fees are still being negotiated as is the process established in the purchasing policy. And once finalized, this contract will be brought forward for city council authorization. I've included also here the actual review criteria that we spelled out in the request for proposals. This was experience, understanding of services to be provided, personnel expertise, compatibility with end users, project approach, satisfaction of clients, end users and cost. The particular aspects that scored open approaches proposal highly were a realistic project approach that included a more in-depth investigative step of the current system and equipment before narrowing in on a specific cost proposal. But they were very clear that the cost in the proposal that they submitted because we asked for costs and needed that to be able to judge the proposal against everybody else were defined as worst case scenario. They really felt like without doing a sort of deep dive under the hood of exactly what's going on throughout the city, they didn't feel like they could provide a more refined cost proposal. And so the cost proposal that they gave us was characteristically described as high. The migration approach was in line with the direction provided to the vendors prior to the final submittal. The monthly service fees were clearly inclusive of licenses such as Microsoft Office licenses. The addendum was a helpful explanation of security risks and the methods used to protect clients from these risks. Therefore, while the proposal was the most costly, the majority of the review committee felt that this approach best matched our current needs and the committee felt that there wouldn't be any additional costs with this approach. Just want to point out also some aspects of simple routes proposal. Prior to the final proposal submittal, we had formed the three vendors that we could not migrate from the town with the split migration method. More specifically, this method would violate the criminal justice information services agreement the police department has with the FBI. It does not allow us to provide anyone with access to the servers and associated configurations. We were clear that we wouldn't move forward with that method and yet simple routes final submittal included this method anyway. They did also include an alternative knowing that we would have a difficulty with the split migration. But the fact that they reiterated it again as a possible approach just seemed like that's an issue with compatibility with end users when we were clear that that's not a approach that we could use. Simple route uncovered vulnerabilities in NemRick software and this is a selling point for them. Unfortunately, the message has the effect of repeatedly identifying a failure of NemRick a company the city works with and that did not sit well with review committee members. Unless you have questions, I won't go through more of what I originally submitted on the March 17th letter but happy to go through that if anybody has questions. So did you have any other evidence at this point? If I'm interrupting, let me know. I do have the, I have the marked confidential pages both from open approach and simple routes proposals that I can submit these under seal if the council would like that. That would be appreciated. Yeah, we're all the same, wouldn't you? Yeah, okay. And so just from a process stance, we would in turn to a question for a moment. So these being marked confidential, these are things that we cannot open up in public session but we need to wait until a deliberative session to open them. Okay, thank you. Did you have any other evidence you'd like to submit? That's it. Okay. Thank you. Right, you as the appellant can go first with cross examination. If you'd like to come on up to a place that has a microphone. So I have a couple of questions. My first, I'm kind of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little I'm kind of curious with respect to the process, you noted that open approach is the chosen awardee needs to do a review of work to provide a price. Why were none of those questions asked upfront given that there were two different ways of responses with respect to the RFP process? I'm not sure I quite understand that question. So effectively the city put forward an RFP, which I think a number of vendors had questions with that were responding. My firm, for instance, asked a number of those questions and those questions were then answered and disseminated with additional information so that we could draft our proposals. Part of that included changing counts on workstations, et cetera. And so you noted that open approach needed additional information to give an actual price, but none of that actually came up and none of those questions were asked prior to the actual second response. I think that the process was the same and fair for everybody, open approaches, response to the proposal included an approach that identified their first step would be looking under the hood at much, much more detail. The other proposals did not include that as an approach and just came forward with what their migration strategy would be and what the costs would be for monthly service going forward. And like I said, open approach had those included in their proposal as well, but they identified them as a worst case scenario because they wanted to look further to make sure they were getting that right and they weren't underselling what the project would actually take. And do you fear that that might impact costs in a negative way given that that then opens the door as the highest bidder for a significantly higher cost to the city? That's possible and the review committee felt like that approach was the best approach and gonna give us the best product and it would be the best working relationship moving forward. And so you mentioned CEGIS specifically. I actually CEGIS certified and provide IT to other police departments. So I'm very familiar with CEGIS, specifically with respect to active directory and the path that we outlined. Are you aware that there's no CEGIS data in active directory? That is a technical question that I don't, I'm not gonna be able to answer. Okay, so I think as a, can I make a point of clarification or am I only allowed to ask questions? Clarification on what? On the prior claims with respect to CEGIS. I'm not sure how, how would it relate to the question of the process? I think what he's trying to get at is that level of data that he's referring to migrating out and whether it would actually impact any of the confidential data that the agreement refers to. User names and groups and things like that, I'm assuming both employees would not, I think it's probably worth getting at. So to act as an expert, if you will, in this field to further define what CEGIS is, is that what you're hoping to clarify? That's I guess what I'm asking, Adam. Well, so I'll answer your question and I'll take the date there. So that there is no criminal justice data within Active Directory, there are accounts. And so our proposed split migration path was to effectively split Active Directory into leveraging two separate networks that then thought that they were actually their own network. There's a path to do that. It would not require bringing or copying CEGIS data from the town over to the city. And the accounts on either side would be cleaned up and deleted as part of that process. And so the risk and the fear that Alex identified, again, without anyone citing that he actually works for the town of Essex, but still with the history doing this work was that if it were done improperly, there could be a risk. But effectively it could still be done. So, but I wanna be clear that there is no CEGIS data within Active Directory. So, and so back to questions though, can you, I'm guessing you can't. You would not answer then what the worst-case scenario was with respect to the cost proposed by open approach. It's in a confidential pages of their proposal. Can you answer whether or not that's under $182,000 a year? It is. By a significant margin. I think that that's getting to a point of rather subjective and not necessarily something that- So back then to maybe something more substantiative, with respect to the initial engagement with open approach, can you maybe describe the water department project and how that came to pass? Not firsthand. So I was not, I only started in the city on September 15th. That project happened before I was here. Do you know if other competitive quotes were received for that project? I believe it was the sole source contract. And in your knowledge of purchasing policy, would that mean that that was a violation of the purchasing policy? If I may ask a quick question. So the point of this hearing is about whether the purchasing policy for this contract was followed or not, not a previous one. That would have needed to happen a while ago. Okay, but part of why I'm asking is that the prior relationship was one of the reasons cited for choosing open approach. And so if their prior relationship is in question as to how they came into that prior relationship, I think it throws reliance on that question. Counselors, how do you feel? Well, as a side, what I was considering before when I was deciding, trying to figure out if I had a question or not was the large purchase portion, while it does describe of the purchase policy is described as he says it is. It also says the unified manager has the authority to delegate large purchases to department heads of such delegation as deemed necessary for the orderly conduct of business as determined by the unified manager. And I'm just not recalling which manager was. So I'm not sure on the line of question. Is there a way to mute somebody? You mute the bottom center? You can't do it. Hold on. I'm just wondering if that's even relevant because it appears there's a procedure outlined in that policy that would seem to allow the sole source contractor to purchase. And I'm just not remembering the purchase right off the top of my head. So this is the comment question if this is worthwhile following. Yeah, I would say not. Yeah. You can move on to the next question, please. And can you explain how in the seven criteria those were, I mean, you've handed them a piece of paper that I don't have access to. What sort of weight was given and how were each of the different items actually considered with respect to scoring? The criteria were not weighted any differently. They were all equal weight. I think that was your only question. Was it, did I miss that? Yeah. And so like I see here, for instance, you've given a score. Did people just assign a number? Like what was that process? Each of the criteria were a scale of zero to 10. Okay. And so effectively then you just totaled up each of those numbers and that was the award. Yeah. Okay. I think the last question I have is six of those have to do with your qualifications. Actually, no, I'll refrain from that question. I have no further questions. I think I've asked what I need to ask. Okay. So thank you. Thank you. You can step back. Yeah. You can keep back there. So city counselors, questions for Regina? Hey, I have a question. Can you please? Thank you. Can I be removed? Can I be removed? Can I be removed? That'd be great. Thank you. You're listening to my question. How are they probably growing by the city browser? Great. I think you're gonna need to take a recess. And then we... I think that's okay for now, Regina, if it's just gonna... Here you go. Okay. Thank you. I guess I have one question if nobody else does. Yeah, Raj, why don't you go ahead and go first? All right, Regina. You said under aspects of simple routes proposal, you mentioned that review staff thought that the mention of the uncovering of NEMRIC vulnerabilities didn't sit well because it tarnished or was it because it... Can you explain that a little more and maybe speak to the... You can't say probably exactly for other people, right? But how much of an impact do you think that had on score for this? I think... I'm not sure that it had a ton to do on the scores themselves. You can see that the scores are relatively close at the end of the day, but... And really, it speaks to the concept of the purpose of an RFP and RFP processes because we're creating a professional relationship. We're choosing the right professional relationship going forward. And I can... So not speaking for anybody else, just speaking for myself. Every interaction with simple route that NEMRIC was brought up. And it's great, and it's super helpful to the whole state that they figured that out, and it's appreciated. My... Just it leaves you with a... Just a reiteration of how a company that we work with all the time and have a good working relationship with was at fault at some point in time. And we heard that in the preliminary proposal. We saw that in the final proposal. We saw that in the interview. And it in and of itself just didn't sit well. You can also see it up there. Yes, okay. George, Dan, Amber, any questions for Regina? I don't have a question for Regina, so maybe it is not appropriate, but I'm just curious, Andrew, if you've been since there is high interest in this and the scores are a public document now that they've been introduced, I think, and I'm wondering if you could put them up on the screen. Would that be helpful, anything? I'm not sure how I'd be able to put them up on the screen unless I just hold up a piece of paper. But I could read off what the scores are in terms of the... I don't know if it's helpful or not just for the original public interest. You know, an audience here, people tuning in. It may not be, it's not... Maybe it's sufficient to say the scores were very close. With it being entered in into evidence, I assume these would all be made available after the meeting, and if members of the public you want to check it out then, then they could at that point in time. I think just a safe time instead of going through the documents we've received. Um, Regina, you mentioned, I believe you mentioned in your testimony that there was an updated inventory that was shared with two of the three vendors later on in the process. I don't see where that was in your notes. Yeah, sorry, I didn't point it out. It's not in the notes. It's that updated inventory was shared with all three vendors. Okay, it was with all three? Yeah, so following the interviews and prior to the final submittal, we sent out an updated inventory and that's when we also let folks know that we couldn't do the split migration. Okay, appreciate that. You had mentioned that Open Approach had their price listed as a worst case scenario. Is this something that was unique to Open Approach's bid or was it something that was in others? That was unique. You also mentioned, please correct me if I'm wrong, I believe you had mentioned that Open Approach's final proposal had included additional exploration activities early on in the process. Did others also have this exploration as a part of the process? Not that I recall. Okay, did you say that it was the first activity that Open Approach had was to do this additional exploration into the project? Yeah, I mean, that is sort of underlying in their whole approach that they described in the sense that what they were putting on the table in terms of the dollar amounts were worst case scenario, knowing they would want to look under the hood and be able to refine those. Okay. Thank you. I had no other questions. Counselors, if there are no other questions. One more. You have one more? Yeah, I'm sorry. After the inventory, the second, I guess the side, I'm not sure how to refer to it, but there was an inventory sent out again, it sounds like. Did Open Approach give you an idea of how off they thought that might be? Because it sounds like they assumed that that wasn't quite as accurate as they felt comfortable with. So the inventory is, I probably could have submitted this, I don't think I have it in this stack of paper, is a Word document that essentially was describing the number of computers and the number of users in each department, not type of equipment, age of equipment, end of life, licensing, warranty, all of that level of detail. Was that provided to anybody? Did anybody else ask for that? Or is that, would that have been a normal request? Hard to know, I guess. So just to clarify that, we didn't provide them any further detail if that's what you mean. I guess I'm just wondering, did any of the bidders have access to that level of detail? They just scrubbed on the gear that is not, besides server stacks, warranties, licenses, all that. Yeah, so we did site visits at all of the locations in the city and everybody had the opportunity to come and look at the equipment, ask questions, and everybody did that. I think, again, open approach came for site visit as well. I think just at the level of information they were given, the level of information they were given, which is the same level of information everybody else was given, they just felt like it was not the level of information they needed to really give us a very refined number. Okay, got it. Then with no other questions, thank you, Regina. If you don't mind taking a seat back into the audience. And then, so, Brad, if you'd like to have closing statements, you can have up to three minutes. Whenever you are ready, go ahead. So, again, I really appreciate everyone's time in getting to review this. The reason I think we talk about NEMRX so much is a fewfold. One being that the very people that we helped per city manager Mahoney's prior testimony, I think may not still understand what was actually at risk or what is at risk today. So, the challenge with NEMRX as a software is that it runs on visual box brow, which has been dead for about a decade. It is not a supported product and that is the core of that application. And it is for that reason that you need to take special consideration with respect to securing it. And it's that that actually creates a bunch of issues with respect to the software. The fact of the matter is NEMRX actually is one of the cheapest options for municipalities to achieve what NEMRX does. And for that reason, I would say it's a necessary evil. And so, whether you love it or hate it, we live with it. And so, we design IT systems around that and we have a lot of clients that also have insecure software or software that maybe isn't as secure as we would like it to be. And the fact of the matter is we design systems around that every day. So, I think, and in particular, in the walkthrough, Rob had asked questions about securing it and was completely on board for everything we said with respect to that from the town of Essex. In the actual process, we walked through the facilities. We drafted a response to the RFP. We were then interviewed and given a chance for questions, which is part of how that entire second round of questions and answers were generated. Every other firm was afforded the same opportunity. And so, I think it's absolutely ridiculous that Open Approach's bid could not actually provide enough clarity to answer the questions to what the cost would be. They had the opportunity to ask those questions in the interview of everyone that was present and actually provide a firm cost to do the work. And so, to take a worst case stance to assume that the things that are actually under contract and under support need to be replaced is crazy. I mean, it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. So, again, I think the decision needs to ultimately come down to what is in the city's best interests. So, that's all I have to say. I really appreciate the time though. And I appreciate everyone's time in this process. Thank you, Brett. Thank you. And whenever you're ready. Yeah. Really just feel confident in the process that we went through. It was thorough. We had a number of different steps to it. We had a number of staff and town staff helping us decide through the process who was going to be the best fit. And we really felt that going with open approach was going to put us in a place that would not come with any additional or further costs other than what they put in the proposal. And we also were quite confident that the proposal would not. The cost wouldn't come in as high as they put in their proposal. But it would be literally worst case scenario. And I feel confident today that I still believe it was the right decision. Thanks. Thank you. So then with that, I will close the evidence. And I will close the hearing. Our next agenda item is to potentially have a deliberative session. And so with that, I would go ahead and I will move it to city council, enter into deliberative session to discuss the IT contract award appeal pursuant to one VSA, section 312E and F, and to include the city council and city attorney. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Great. So I pass unanimously. Thank you all. Have a good evening. Say yes. Yeah. That would be wonderful. I did do this once before, poorly.