Council urges Trustees to nix outsourcing

Dissenters aired their criticisms at a special meeting of Council. University Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution yesterday asking the Board of Trustees to reject the administration's four-week-old proposal to turn over facilities management to Trammell Crow Co. With many Council members arguing that administrators didn't sufficiently consult the University community before announcing the plans October 8, the campus-wide advisory body approved the resolution by at least a three-to-one margin in a show-of-hands vote. There was no official tally. Council also approved a separate resolution to create a campus-wide committee examining "the problems that have been raised about the consultative process." It was unclear last night, however, whether the resolution would actually convince Trustees to reject the deal in a vote tomorrow. "I can't really say too much about how I feel it will affect the Trustees," said Victoria Tredinnick, chairperson of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, which proposed the resolutions. "But I think there were a lot of clear statements from many different members of the University community [opposing the deal]." About 50 members -- more than half of Council, an unusually high turnout -- attended the special session in Houston Hall's Bodek Lounge, along with about 60 nonmembers. Twenty-five percent of the body, the required number of members necessary to call a special meeting, signed petitions for the rare session last week. Most of the 15 Council members and 10 non-members -- including the leaders of several student, faculty and staff organizations -- who spoke at the two-hour meeting criticized administrators for keeping negotiations with Trammell Crow secret until Executive Vice President John Fry signed a nonbinding letter of intent last month. "The community here is broken," GAPSA officer Matthew Ruben said in a speech near the end of the meeting that brought the afternoon's first applause. "There is an atmosphere of distrust?. There has got to be a structural problem if these lessons learned do not transfer from one office to another." A handful of administrators, however, praised officials for taking action to fix a department that frequently exceeds budget costs, misses project deadlines and has a long backlog of service requests. Barry Stupine, associate dean of administration in the Veterinary School, told Council that the federal government has rejected grant requests for some projects because the Division of Facilities Management quoted too high a price for the job. The University "excels at many things," Stupine said. "Facilities management is not one of them." He added that many faculty members and staff feel "demoralized" by problems within the facilities management division. University President Judith Rodin began the meeting by telling Council that "there has been a great deal of consultation over a long period of time that led to the mandate to control administrative costs," adding that the deal was one "result of that consultative process." She repeated officials' earlier assurances that employees hired by Dallas-based Trammell Crow won't lose benefits, and that increased salaries would make up any difference between their University benefits and what they receive while working for Trammell Crow. Rodin was unavailable for comment after the meeting. One University employee, Richard Cipollone of Physical Plant, leveled a series of personal attacks at Executive Vice President John Fry, accusing him of expanding University bureaucracy while cutting facilities management positions. "Most of the people who are affected by the Trammell Crow deal have been here for years and years," Cipollone said. "We've been doing our jobs. But John Fry has not been doing his. Instead of finding ways to make Penn more efficient, John Fry is? making deals." Fry sat still with a straight face and hands clasped while Cipollone made the short speech. He later emphasized that he doesn't "respond to personal charges." "I don't take things personally," he said. Cipollone is one of four people suing the University and Trammell Crow in U.S. District Court over the legality of the deal. The October lawsuit, which seeks class-action status for the 180 employees affected by the agreement, accuses the defendants of using the deal to reduce employees' benefits illegally. If Trustees approve the 10-year contract, Trammell Crow will pay the University at least $26 million, while receiving annual payments of about $5.25 million to manage the properties. Officials have said the firm will hire at least 110 University employees, who have the first chances to interview for the jobs.

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