A resolution approving a proposed Agreement between the City and County of Denver and Aramark Correctional Services, LLC to provide meal services at the Denver Detention Facility and Denver County Jail. Approves a contract with Aramark Correctional Services, LLC for $9,000,000 and through 6-30-23 to provide services of preparing and serving meals at the Denver Detention Facility and Denver County Jail (SAFTY-202158720). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 7-19-21. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-16-21.
Councilmember Sawyer has called out Bill 572 for a vote. Under pending, no items have been called out. The first item up is Council Resolution 655. Councilmember Hines, will you please put Council Resolution 655 on the floor for adoption. And move the Council Resolution 20 1-0655 be adopted? Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Questions or comments by members of Council. Council. Member State of Abarca. Thank you, Madam President. I caught this one out for a separate vote because Aramark is known for many of the things we just heard in public comment, including serving spoiled food to inmates. And we've heard from people inside of the department, as well as outside of the department who really do not want us to support this contract . And so I'm going to stand with them this evening and vote no. And I encourage my colleagues to vote no as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember CdeBaca. We have Councilmember Hines. You're up. Thank you, Madam President. There's someone from safety here. I'd like to ask. Basically that. Oh, thank you. The question I have is, um, we certainly want our, our guests in our jails to eat, right? If we say no to this contract, does that mean that we will not have a way to provide food for our inmates? Thank you. Councilmember Hines, we have Vince Lane from the sheriff's department here. So we'll go ahead, Vince. Go ahead. And you can answer that question. Good evening, Counsel and Councilmember Hines, I appreciate your question. No, it doesn't mean that we currently provide food services internally. And certainly if this contract were to not move forward, we would continue to provide that service as an internal service provided by sheriff's department staff. Thank you. And thank you for all you do. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Haynes, and thank you, Vince, for being here as well. We've got Council Pro-Tem Torres. You're up next. Thank you, Madam President. Chief line, were the complaints that have been made about. Spoiled. Food, were those in Denver, how is that kind of complaint or. The quality of the of the food. Overseen. Within the jail? Thank you, counsel. Council woman Torres I'm not familiar with any complaints at all related to Aramark from Denver. They don't currently have a contract with us, so they're not providing that service with DSD currently. So I'm not familiar with any Denver based complaints. To answer the second part of your question, we have put some what I would refer to maybe as some guardrails in place to ensure that appropriate oversight. Excuse me. Is main is maintained throughout the term of the contract. I'm one of those things that we've done is assigned an executive level of our command team, which is the major who currently oversees as the facility administrator, the county jail, where the vast majority of our food service functions occur. And part of his ancillary roles moving forward will be to oversee the contract and ensure that all things related to the contract and all things, quite frankly, related to food service are maintained. You know, meeting extremely high standards. That's one of the things that we've put in place. We also will have regular inspections and audits done. Some of those inspections and audits will be done by the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. And in fact, I believe Danica Leave from DDP. She is also on the call here and can speak specifically to the inspections that will be done by DDP as well. In addition to that, we maintain a couple of different accreditations here at DSD. One of them is the American Correctional Association and the other is the National Commission on Corrections Health Care. Both of those sets of standards require specific things be met related to food service. Those two processes come along with multiple audits and inspections to ensure that those standards are being met. So in addition to inspections being done by our own staff that work in the accreditations area, regular audits will be done by those two entities as well to make sure that we're continuing to meet those standards. In addition to, you know, executive command oversight inspections and accreditation, we also have a very formalized complaint procedures internally here at DSD, so that anyone in our custody that has any issue with anything related to food service, they can file those complaints by means of a grievance . And then we have a specific unit that reviews every one of those grievances and then makes assignments so that we can provide adequate responses to the inmates and that we can correct any issues that we find, any services that we provide. So that gives you an idea of the various types of oversight or guardrails that have been put in place to ensure that those high level of standards that we expect our continue to be maintained throughout the term of the contract. Thank you. And I do have one question about the price adjustments section of the contract. Is that something that you can answer cheaper or is there somebody else? We actually have two two other people on this evening that might be able to help with that. Troy Bratton is on from the city attorney's office that may be able to answer that. And then also we have Ian Dougherty on from finance that may be able to assist with that. So if either one of them are are suited, perhaps they can make it known that they can answer that question for you. All right, we've got them both in the queue. And so it's Trey or Ian, either one of you. And I'll just ask the question. The bill request goes through. Looks like it's June 20, 23 with. Uh. Extension years. Just wondering for the 9 million that's presented how the price adjustments are contemplated within that contract amount. Hi, this is Troy. Troy Brown from the city attorney's office. I'm going to go ahead and defer to an on on one and finance. Then I can ask answer any legal questions that might come up. But I'll I'll leave the pricing questions to the finance. Certainly. Thank you, Troy. Thank you, Councilmember Torres, for this question. In terms of the price adjustments. I believe with the way the contract is set up, with the terms ending midyear gives us some flexibility in if we need to request additional funds due to the due to the CPI increases that we we have that flexibility, we'll be able to use our our typical methods for, you know, youth analysis and projecting expenditures in order to be able to in order to meet those needs. But we we believe that that we'll be able to do that with minimal impact. So just and maybe it's a non-issue. But I was just I found it interesting. And when I ask the question, the price adjustment arrived at INS June 30th, 2022, but the contract goes through 2023, so it'll be adjusted within that first period of time. And just wanting to see that the 9 million covered a price adjustment. So you're contemplating a CPI and of a standard CPI. I? Yes, I believe if memory serves me, that is actually. Written into the contract. Okay. Okay. Nothing further. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. In. Q All right. Thank you, Councilmember Pro-Tem Torres. Up next, we've got Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Chief Line. I don't know if you are the person to address this. Or maybe Troy. Section six of the contract deals with termination. I want to expand a little bit on the earlier questions, the accreditation we have from the American Correctional Association and the other accreditation that they contain. They include standards for food service and food quality. The termination section of the contract, section six, we can terminate this upon a breach or default of the agreement, and that would include the scope of services, any breach in those food service standards that would imperil our accreditation. Is that the case? I'm just a little concerned that we don't have the right to terminate other than for breach or default. This is from the city attorney's office. That's correct. Counsel then slammed the scope of work as incorporated into the contract. So any breach of any of the standards in the scope of work would also give us the ability to terminate the contract as well under that termination clause. And, you know, our standard clauses allow for legal remedies administratively and through litigation. So the scope of work is incorporated into the contract as well. Okay. So Chief, could you expand a little bit on what you call the guardrails? I read the memo that you sent out earlier last week about how we are going to ensure that Aramark which serve food in this in our two facilities. That does not result in the kinds of complaints that we've seen with some of aramark's, other correctional facilities contracts around the country. How are we going to avoid that? Councilmember Flynn, thank you for that question, sir. I'd like to defer to Danica Lee from CHP. I believe she's on the phone as well and can help answer that question specifically about the inspections and audits that'll be conducted by by the health department. All right. Thank you. Great. Thanks for joining us, Danica. Go ahead. The first thing. Thank you, Madam President. And good evening, counsel. Thank you for that question, Councilman Flynn. So we already conduct inspections in all these venues, the jail settings, and know part of what we do is respond to complaints, conduct inspections and take enforcement actions as needed. In terms of being able to avoid complaints. That's a very difficult thing to control for. But what we can do is make routine assessments, conduct inspections, assess for any issues, follow up on complaints will receive them, and then conduct three inspections is needed to verify compliance. And so that's a system that we use that you're likely familiar with in many different regulated food settings across the city, in Turkey, in Denver. And I'm happy to respond to any more specific questions, though. I thank you, darling. I didn't mean to imply that we would we avoid complaints. I think complaints are probably inevitable under any contract or under any condition. But how do we how do we handle them? How do we determine that they're legitimate? I know that Aramark serves over 400 correctional facilities around the country, and we've heard about some serious problems in some of them. So I don't want to be one of those one of those that has the complaints. I want to make sure that we have a mechanism in place so that we can actually terminate the contract if there is a breach. And I know that there's a period to cure a 30 day period to cure, but that's why I wanted to be clear. You also did EPA. She also does inspections right now under the the in-house program, do you not? That's correct. We do conduct inspections of whoever is in that role. Preparing and serving food. We had complaints about food quality under the in-house program. I'm not aware of any recently. Certainly going back in past years and visiting four or five years ago, I can recall a few, but nothing consistent or anything that's on my radar right now. Okay. Chief Lyon, can you elaborate on that? Are you aware of food service complaints under the sheriff's department program? Councilman Flynn, thanks for that question. And yeah, I can elaborate on that a little bit. It's not uncommon for us to get complaints from those in our care about either the quantities, if they believe that the quantities are too small, or perhaps they believe their meal was too cold or things like that. So we do occasionally get complaints like that, and when we get those complaints, they're typically done by means of a grievance. Those grievances that are forwarded to our grievance and incident response team, they then review those grievances to determine who's the best person to respond to those grievances, and then they get cataloged, farmed out, and reporting is maintained relative to those grievances so that we can respond to those. And if we have continued grievances, we can look into those things. There's also a procedure in place to elevate those to higher levels of command. So it's also not uncommon, although not frequent, for grievances to eventually arrive at my desk at each level. In the grievance process, we have the ability to investigate and we can go down, we can interview the inmates, we can take a look at the food quality and quantity ourselves and then make appropriate adjustments if we need to . So that's part of the internal complaint procedures, if you will, that we refer to as a grievance process for the inmates to follow if there are complaints. Okay. And of course, under the current program, we can't fire ourselves. Right. But we can terminate the Aramark contract. Are you. Are you aware of how our complaints have been handled before as a as a resulted in corrections to how we prepare our food under the current program? Yes, sir, I am. Typically, they are handled at the lowest level. If a if a deputy happens to get a complaint or receive a complaint from an inmate about an issue, there's some discretion at that level for them to take immediate action. If the inmate is complaining about some sort of food that they're served, then they can show it to the to the deputy and make that issue known. The deputy can can take some steps to remedy that right there on the on the scene and either or address the issue. Thank you. That's what I was driving at, because when you say they can file a grievance, that sounds like it's a very long process that would take longer than breakfast or lunch. So things can be resolved on the spot. Can they be resolved on the spot under this contract as well? Yes, sir, they can. The grievance process and complaint process won't change whatsoever. And if an inmate has a complaint, that can be acted upon immediately. Okay. Thank you. That's all. Madam President. All right. Very good. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. And thank you, Chief Lane and the team for being here to answer the questions this evening and not seeing any other hands raised. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. CdeBaca. Oh, no, Clark. All right. Flynn. I. Herndon. I. Hines, I. Cashman. I. Can I? Sawyer. No. Torres. I. Black I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary. Close the voting and announce the results. Two names. Nine I's. Nine I's Council Resolution 21, dash 20655 has passed. The next item up is Council Resolution 667. Councilmember Hines, will you please put Council Resolution 667 on the floor for adoption?