The airport has item 7 on the consent agenda at city council this week.
The item proposes to award a sole-source contract for about $100,000 a year for three years to a company that will maintain software and equipment at the airport parking lot.
The backup material states “Mitchell Adding Machine DBA Mitchell Time and Parking is the sole source provider for Armano McGann software and revenue control equipment used to operate the Airport Parking Lot”.
State law allows sole-source purchases to be be done without bidding.
The truth
It took about 30 seconds to go to the Armano McGann web site and find this page which shows dozens of dealers and distributors.
Does staff know the truth? Are they deliberately facilitating a lie?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Is it possible those dealers and distributors “own” exclusive geographic territories for distribution and sales of the software and maintenance? That is a common practice in the distribution industry.
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Gone Fishing’s comment shows that the company has the airport as a “protected account”, not as part of a territory agreement.
This smacks of restraint of trade.
Texas Business and Commerce Code states: “§ 15.05. UNLAWFUL PRACTICES. (a) Every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce is unlawful.” I guess it would take a court case to decide if this practice of granting “protected account” status is a violation of the law.
Why would the city enter into a relationship for a commodity that would end up with only one service source available?
Brutus
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yep, my thoughts exactly when I posted it. glad you were able to cite the relevant code. now, check out this link. city of El Paso is Mitchell’s largest government contract and accounts for about 25% of their govt business
http://profiles.smartprocure.us/organization/mitchell-adding-machine
they also used this same sole source ploy with the city of Austin as shown here. even this page refers to the service as a commodity
https://www.austintexas.gov/financeonline/contract_catalog/OCCViewMA.cfm?cd=MA&dd=8200&id=NS100000051&cat=S&page=S
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Looking at your first link we see that the vendor has done business with the city of Fort Worth.
Then we can see this document (http://www.fortworthgov.org/council_packet/mc_review.asp?ID=15188&councildate=9/13/2011) where the city of Fort Worth claims that Association Time and Parking Controls is the sole-source provider for Fort Worth.
It looks like the sole-source ploy is being used in multiple locations.
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Here’s some background and the justification used previously …
Click to access 05221208A.pdf
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Wow, for a moment I thought this was an article about the El Paso Times after reading the headline…
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