2010-10-22 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MS. NICHOLSON: And you do that three times a year, or you accept the request three times a year? MR. BENEVIDES: We accept bulk of requests three times a year specifically. But all through the course of the year, we still handle the every day purchases that come in as well. MS. NICHOLSON: And so how much control would a department have over the specifications of the kind of printer they want? How do you try to sort of package those kinds of requests to get the biggest bang for your buck versus saying I want an HP printer and I want this kind and I want that kind, and I want those features. How do you MR. BENEVIDES: Oh we deal with that all the time. But over the years we have, because you know this is not something, like printers for instance, every year we buy printers. So over the course of the last 29 years that I’ve been there, we put together specs on printers and such and multi function machines that meet a general standard that is not restricted in the marketplace so that everybody can bid on it, while still giving our people what they need to perform the functions. For a printer for instance, I think we have about nine different types of printers, because of the speed the output and so on and so forth. So the using agency knowing what is available in the market place and looking at prior bids, we’ll start their request out with that specific specification and reference that specification. So when we get it we know what we’re looking at to begin with. Now we tell them that if you need any changes to this, just mark it up in red, tell us where the changes are. And then we review it at that point to make sure that those requests are again not restricted to competition, and we put out the bids accordingly after that. MS. NICHOLSON: And then just one more question on that. So, if you see that a department is requesting six new printers or let’s don’t do printers. Let’s do a copy machine. Six like individual copy machines. Do you look at that and go, well why can’t they get one really multi function copy machine and all network to it? How do those kinds of decisions get made? Is that within the department? MR. BENEVIDES: That decision is made by the department based on their budget. And once it comes to us it’s already been decided that that’s what they want. Our function is then to go procure it under the procurement law.Now if we see something is way out of bounds, somebody putting in a vehicle, for a Cadillac for instance or something. Of course we’re going to question something like that. If they’re buying more than usual in quantity, we would call and ask. But it’s not really, we don’t really police that. When it comes to us, the requisition basically says that the department head is authorizing that procurement based on their budget for their department. We proceed in buying it under the procurement law unless something looks, unless there’s a red flag if something looks way out of line. We don’t police per se. MS. CRAWFORD: If I can just add in. I would say the control you’re talking about really happens more in the budgeting process. During our fairly extensive budget hearings that we go through, not the council hearings, but in advance of that when we’re working with the departments. They have for one thing, for equipment type purchases, 10