What a difference a few months make.

Back in January, February and March, Fire Chief Mike Zywanski was trying to stampede the City Council into buying Zoll replacement defibrillators on a no-bid basis because the current ones were past their useful life and implicitly jeopardized the safety of Park Ridge residents.  He kept that shtick up until a few pointed questions from Mayor Dave Schmidt and Finance Committee chair Ald. Dan Knight (5th) forced him to admit that public safety would not be threatened by delaying that purchase.

At Monday night’s public works Council COW meeting, bowever, Chief Z sounded like a man who had found religion – even if the epiphany was produced by a whack on the head with a Bible or the City Code – when he proclaimed that not only did his evaluation Committee test two brands of defibrillator besides his beloved Zoll, but that the Committee is now looking at “reconditioned units,” “military surplus” units, and purchasing cooperatives.

Wow!  Next thing you’ll know, Chief Z will be featured on the new Joe Francis exploitation video: “Fire Chiefs Gone Wild!”?

Chief Z even brought Battalion Chief Tim Norton along with him, who confirmed (in response to a question from Knight) that the current defibrillators are still in good working order.

That’s good to know, because according to Chief Z there’s still a lot to do before he brings a formal purchase recommendation to the Council – even though the Committee (according to its August 28 meeting minutes) already has unanimously recommended the Zoll.  Chief Z talked about the need to solicit information and opinions about the competing defibrillators from users besides the four Committee members, and to get pricing information.

So in true cart-before-the-horse fashion, Chief Z’s evaluation Committee has unanimously recommend the Zoll device: (a) without getting any written evaluations from the PRFD personnel who performed most of the 220 field tests of the competing units (at least 70 for each model); (b) without contacting other fire departments to get their input and experience with the three devices; and (c) without getting any pricing.

As the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland absurdly demanded: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.”

Amazingly enough, from simply listening to Chief Z describe this process Monday night, you might have thought he really had no idea how lame and inept it actually sounded.  And without the Council meeting videos providing close-ups, it’s impossible to pick up any facial “tells,” gestures or body language that might reveal whether he was buying his own story.

Chief Z also mentioned the need for him to get together with the City Attorney to find out whether this purchase needs to go out for bid/RFP.  When that occurs, however, you can bet the ranch that the main topic of conversation will be ways to avoid competitive bidding or an RFP process.  Such avoidance likely will involve Chief Z arguing that only the Zoll is small enough to fit in the current ambulances without any significant retro-fitting – an argument he previewed Monday night when he announced that the “size of the units will be a big factor” and we already know just by looking at the specs that the Zoll is notably smaller than either the LifePak or the HeartStart.

How convenient that no set of criteria was established BEFORE the field-testing was conducted.  Without such pre-established criteria, Chief Z and his Committee members have a clean slate on which to write any bidding/RFP criteria needed to favor the Zoll defibrillator, especially if the City Attorney gives any weight to Chief Z’s insistence that size really does matter.

But look on the bright side.

It’s always possible that the Zoll is the better unit of the three field tested.  And it’s always possible that the junior-high quality field-testing protocol Chief Z came up with is simply the best he can do, and not evidence of a kinked-up deal.  And it’s always possible that the Committee’s evaluation process is straight-up objective rather than subjectively steered.

Then again, almost everything is “possible.”

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