A proclamation in recognition of James P. McIntyre, Director of Purchasing, upon his retirement. In recognition of James P. McIntyre, Director of Purchasing, upon his retirement.
Thank you very much. And thank you, Councilman Lopez, for that proclamation. We have a second proclamation this evening, and I would like to call upon Councilwoman Lehman to read proclamation number 424. Thank you, Madam President. In recognition of James P McIntyre, director of purchasing upon his retirement. WHEREAS, James P McIntyre started his career with the city as a staff to analyst on May six, 1991, and worked his way through the ranks, becoming associate buyer, senior buyer. Supervisor and. Deputy Director before promoting his current position as Director of Purchasing in 2006. And. Whereas, his vision shifted the culture, clarified notes, empowered his staff, and established a career growth opportunity structure for the division. And. Whereas, as director, he diligently served on the Board of Directors and was seated on the Executive Committee for the Rocky Mountain. Minority. Supplier Diversity Council and Choir Chorale collaborated with the local Chamber of Commerce in order to foster relationships with numerous. Small minority and women. Owned enterprises. And. Whereas, he served on the advisory board for the U.S. Communities Government Purchasing Alliance, and he has encouraged building. Relationships with organizations nationwide. To capitalize on. The benefits of cooperative agreements for the betterment of the city. And. Whereas, James diligently served city agencies and staff throughout his career and managed firm and expenditures in excess of $2 billion and guided cost saving efforts of $31 million. For more than eight years as a director. And. Whereas, James. Has been the steady hand at the helm of the purchasing division. He is widely appreciated and respected for his leadership within the city, among his contemporaries and business leaders throughout the nation. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one. The Council hereby recognizes James P McIntyre for his 23 years of service to the city and county of Denver. Section two The Council. Thanks, James, for his dedication to the residents of the city and county of Denver and wishes him well in the next stage of his life. Section three that the clerk of the city and county of Denver shall attest. And a fix the seal of the city and the county of Denver to this proclamation and a copy be transmitted to Mr. James P McIntyre. Thank you, Councilwoman Lagman. Your motion to adopt. I move the proclamation for to four series of nine of 2014 be adopted. It's been moved and notably seconded comments by counsel. Councilwoman Lehman. Thank you. It is my pleasure to read this proclamation. James is what I call a nearly. Native of Denver. He was born somewhere else but came in when he was one year old and has lived in the city and county since. And now he's going to move to Chicago. So the shame of it all. Well. It has been such a. Pleasure for me to know, James and to work with James. He is wonderful to ask questions to. He get I give immediate responses. He explains things to me which is really important and helpful. And he's just acted as an incredible. Leader to this city, and especially when he's dealing with. Money, things and purchasing. And so I know that we will miss him, but. I wish him well in his next step in life. Thank you, Councilwoman Lehman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Madam President. Jim is really, really sad to see you go to Chicago, right? When we traded Jay Cutler over there, you get to go watch him instead of Peyton Manning. And I think we're going to lose somebody great to a great city and we're going to lose somebody from our great city. But I know that whatever you do out there, you're going to really make an impact. And I got to work with you a few times. And you've always been a very classy person. Very. Person, very diligent, very thoughtful and knowing that you're from Denver. I know why you're right. And so there's there's something to be said about people who choose to serve the public in our city and that they're Denver residents. It makes it ten times better because you go back and go to sleep in the same city that you had to you serve. So thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, Councilman Nevett. Thank you, Madam President. It may have brought Councilwoman Layman pleasure to read this proclamation, but it didn't bring me any pleasure at all to hear it. I think it's outrageous that Jim McIntyre is retiring that completely. Well, okay, you're retiring. Well, I'll live with it. I got to say, Jim McIntyre has been a pillar of integrity and rigor in the purchasing department, and that has stood the city and county in very good stead, because the the the purchasing process, particularly for big high dollar contracts, can be very fraught. People get very excited about it. A lot of money is at stake. And the process, the processes that Jim McIntyre has put together have withstood all the slings and arrows that could be thrown at it from all of the disgruntled bidders, and they've always stood up. So Jim McIntyre's work has saved us all a lot of pain and heartache, but I am still sorry to see you go. Chicago. Who comes up with this stuff? But yeah, I guess. But, you know, Jay Cutler is a crybaby. And Jim back there. I know crybaby. The guy, they got good sausage. Anyway, thank you, Madam President. Jim, sorry to see you go, but thank you for all the great work you've done for the city. It's been a real pleasure working with you. Thank you. Councilman Leavitt, Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Madam President. I think the Chicago angle has has surprised a lot of us. I'm from Illinois to here, and I really do. I really recommend the go west young man approach works out a lot better in the long run. You really have been helpful and help in analyzing the contracts, and I appreciate the way you've helped me think through some of the concerns I have had when they arise. So thank you, Jim. You've made a true impact and I will miss you. But now I have to question all this. Chicago. Oh, thank you, Councilwoman Fox, Councilwoman Robb. Well, I guess it could be worse, Jim. You could be moving to Seattle and then we'd really resent it. I think you were one of the first people I worked with in the city and county of Denver on process. I knew very little bit very little about the city's RFP process and even less about purchasing. And I don't know if I should even mention what we were working on. But just for those of you are curious. Parking kiosk at the time. So that's probably information that you'll never have to use again. I congratulate you on your retirement. Thank you, Councilwoman Robb. Councilman Lopez. All this talk about Chicago and losing you to Chicago, I think I figured something out. We should figure out who was doing the exit interview and in the contract. Jim must send us pizza from Gino's East on Superior. You send us that, we'll write you a great letter of reference. Oh, right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. All right. I think we are ready for the vote. Liman. Lopez All right. Monteiro Nevitt. Ortega. Hi, Rob Shepherd. Brooks. I thought I heard in college, I. Lopez. Hi, Madam President. I found a secretary close to voting nounced the results. 1212 eyes. The proclamation is adopted. Councilwoman Lehman, would you like to call somebody up to the podium? I think I'd love to hear from Jim Mack. I think that would be an excellent idea. Mr. McIntyre? Oh, he's got a he's got an agent coming by. Good evening. My name is Adrian Benevides, and I am the executive director of the Department of General Services. And if I may speak for a couple of minutes before Jim comes up and and talks to you. You know, this is one of those things that it's. Wonderful for Jim and his family who are here with him tonight. And I'm sure he will. Introduce everybody to you. But it's also bittersweet. For us. Because we are losing a strong leader in our department and for the city. You know, I met Jim nearly three years ago when I came to the city and we hit it off right away. And I thought, you know, I'm not going to come here and talk to you about all of the great things he's done in purchasing and and read statistics to you. But I will mention that he and I had very similar procurement philosophies. He really had an emphasis, as do I, on doing things better, not just being happy with the status quo, but looking at how we can do this better, how we can serve our customer better. He has done several things with changing the process as you guys are aware of couple of ordinances on changing the processes. Just this past year, he did a reorganization within his division that provided much better opportunities for his staff. And as you all also know, the city has been very devoid of any procurement scandals. And that really speaks to Jim's leadership and his emphasis on ethical behavior at excuse me, and the training. That he provides to his staff. One of the things he also did. That I strongly embrace was his emphasis on his staff. If you look. At and I'm sure you guys have worked. With many of our buyers, you see a lot of them are my children's age because he does something different than other procurement directors. He invests in people. He brings them in and he teaches. Them. How to be procurement professionals. And. You know, he doesn't do it just from the philosophy that we can develop these young people and we can provide a career for them. But he looks at it. As How can we learn from them with the expertize, particularly with social media. And computers. And everything else? And just a fresh perspective at procurement has made a huge difference in our department, and it comes from. Jim and his investment in his staff. He also has. A huge concentration on vendors. He meets with vendors all the time where he will explain our processes, explain how they can take advantage of opportunities within our city. As you know, we initiated a major Mwb program for goods and services this past April. But even prior to that. I can tell you from the last couple of years, he has made that a major emphasis working on contracts to have minority and women's participate in minority and women owned businesses, participate in city contract opportunities. So he has. Done that and with this new program, we'll be able to even do more. He has also added immensely to our department's leadership. He works very well with all of our with his peers, our other division leaders, has been supportive of them and teaching them and helping work through processes with them and actually makes for some fun meetings that we have at our staff meetings. One of the other things that he does, which really endeared him to me, is that some of the things that are very important to me are. Also. Extremely important to him. One of those that he. Places high priority on. Is his family. Like I said, they're here tonight. But I know you made some comments about Chicago, and I'll let him explain that to you. But that was a sacrifice he made for his family in going to Chicago. One of the other things he does is, you know, he wears his culture on his sleeve. You won't know how much we talk about Irish culture and the importance that it has to him. And that's important to me because my culture is also important as well as traditions. And of course, there's something I don't know a lot about, but I've learned a lot, which is also important. And that's golf, you know, and. He can talk your ear off about that. But finally, the way this came forward with that was not anything I did. But it was his. Staff. His staff that put this together and the proclamation and many of them are here tonight, and I wanted them to stand so you can recognize how endeared he has become to all of them. So if his staff members could stand. Hey. So with that, I will just say that he will be very missed by our department. But by the city as well. Thank you, Mr. Benevides. Mr. McIntyre. Madam President, members of City Council, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule and your work to do tonight. I'll try to make this brief. I do have my family here. I'd like to introduce my lovely wife, Tammy, who's not only beautiful, but she's also very talented and has a great opportunity in Chicago . So I'm following the money. And my daughter Amanda, my son Matt and my new son in law, Brandon Eriksen, they're getting married in December. Thanks for being here, guys. I really appreciate you coming. I was going to say that Denver's just too tame. I want to go to Chicago. Mix it up, you know, in the mix. But really, it's it's a great opportunity for my wife and I. We're very excited about the move, you know, to this body. I want to thank you and and the administration take the time to do that. I've always had a lot of freedom in managing this department of always feel, you know, unhindered and and and interfered with and as counsel, Nevitt said some of these situations, they do get very emotional and they do get touchy. And it's a testament to this organization and how, you know, quality the people of this council are and the administration is to let our processes work. Key things like vendor selection in the right perspective. And it's made my job very easy. So thank you to that for all your support over the years. To my colleagues around the city, you know, at this point of your career, it really gets down to relationships and the friendships and the mentors I've had. The people that have allowed me to mentor them means so much to me. It's been very gratifying and it's meant a lot to me in my career, to my staff. I think you all know that for me, it's it's hard to find John McIntyre, the guy, and Jimmy Carter, the purchasing director. You know, it is kind of who I am. And you folks are such a big part in my life. We spend a lot of time together every day. I absolutely love this department. And that's of course not because of what we do, but because of what we've meant to each other and what we've built together. Thank you so much for your support. To me, your friendship to me. I really am going to miss you all terribly. And you know, this job changed my life. And there's a lot of people like me who come here with this lofty goal of, I just want to pay my bills. That's how lofty my goals were when I started here 23 years ago. And it gave me a career. It allowed me to to raise my kids in a way I really never dreamed possible and send them off to school and watch them grow into the fine adults they've had here. So, I mean, that's such a testament, right, to be able to work somewhere in a place, an environment and a culture that changed your life. And that's what this organization did for me. Thank you so much, everybody. I'm going to miss you all. Thank you, Mr.. I have another proclamation. This one is going to be read by Councilwoman Robb. Councilwoman, will you please read proclamation number four, four one.