The City Commissioners approved changes to City Commission Policy 242 at their meeting today. Policy 242 covers City procurement policies, including guidelines for competitive solicitation.
According to the meeting agenda, the changes to Policy 242 include:
• conforming updates to the City Commission’s recent ethics reform package (Ordinance 19-O-36AA);
• conforming updates to the “Cone of Silence” as it relates to competitive solicitations (Ordinance 20-O-24);
• updates to reflect recent operational changes implemented to enhance staff efficiency;
• prohibits a City employee from serving on a competitive solicitation evaluation committee if that individual was previously employed by a responding vendor within the prior two (2) years;
• enhances requirements for vendors to disclose potential conflicts of interest during a competitive solicitation;
• updates to the City’s quote and competition thresholds, consistent with best practices identified among peer cities; and
• clarifies the purchasing authorities of Procurement Staff, Management, and Appointed Officials.
The policy changes include the addition of two new ordinances. Ordinance 19-O-36AA was passed at the end of 2019 after a debate over ethics among City employees. The ordinance includes the City of Tallahassee Ethics Code, which lays out guidelines for ethical behavior.
The commissioners introduced the second ordinance, Ordinance 20-O-24, in July. The ordinance tightens restrictions on communication between the City and vendors during a competitive solicitation.
It also changes the effective date of the “Cone of Silence”—the time period when communications between the City and a vendor are prohibited—to the date and time the solicitation is released publicly.
The policy also outlines purchase dollar thresholds that require staff to obtain quotes to ensure the City is getting the best price. Staff recommends increasing the quote threshold from $1,000 to $3,000 based on a review of five other Florida cities.
“Based on staff research, the current quote threshold of $1,000 is far below current practices of other leading peer cities in Florida,” staff reports. “Procurement staff has also indicated that the low quote-requirement threshold has led to a consistent increase in the number of purchases that either utilize sole/single-source request forms, emergency purchase authorizations or overuse of purchasing cards.”
The change will require staff to obtain three written quotes before a purchase if the $3,000 threshold is met.
The policy also clarifies the roles and responsibilities of City departments, employees and vendors, including guidelines for conflicts of interest.
The policy changes will take effect on Oct. 1, 2020, the beginning of Fiscal Year 2021.
City Commission Approves Procurement Policy Changes added by Lexie Pitzen on
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• Updates to reflect each Commissioner follow the genius procedure developed by the School Board Superintendent to have all monies from grateful vendors deposited into a Political Action Corporation set up simmilar to Rocky’s HAA HAA Las Vegas accounts.
This will forever eliminate the embarrassment and brown skid mark stain Scott Maddox brought onto The Commission.
And best of all we all can still get paid off for doing our jobs as before the Maddox brown skid mark stain.
If Commissioners choose to address the ridiculous demands of antifa black lives matters losers and criminals demands I suggest they address these issues instead…
1) Thank our wonderful local law enforcement leaders and rank-and-file for the excellent job they did in protecting Tallahassee last weekend.
2) Also thank the law enforcement for wearing their riot gear.
3) Open up an investigation to find out why out of all the citizens who applied for Scott Maddox’s seat why did Curtis Richardson and Elaine Bryant engage in a text message with each other that night and was Denise Williams Cox’s nomination for Elaine Bryant anyway involved in behind the scenes out of the sunshine with Curtis? It is very suspect that Curtis and Williams Cox zeroed in on one candidate together.
3) Discuss painting all lives matter in front of the Commissioners homes and businesses to remind them who they represent and take out all expenses out of their paychecks.
City needs to reinstate the $250,000 threshold above which Commissioners need to approve infrastructure improvements. This was changed in March 2011 and allows the City Manager to approve all purchases of the dollar amount had been approved during the budgeting process. However, there is no transparency to citizens as to how individual contracts are approved and needs to be reinstated for Commissioners approving contracts above $250K.
How about voting on ENDING the ridiculous mandatory “muzzle” order for healthy people that was never justified to begin with! We’ve not had an overflowing of Covid patients at TMH or dead bodies piling up on our streets from Covid deaths! Number of cases does NOT equal automatic death or hospitalization!! STOP playing POLITICAL GAMES with people’s lives!! Why these brilliant City Kommisioners want to continue to destroy small businesses in their own community, I will never understand! It’s time to end this nonsense!!! ?
Scott Mattox, Rick Fernandez and Andrew Gillum preferred their own procurement systems.
(sorry, could not resist!)