2010-10-22 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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It’s based on the law but it gives you the detail on how to put your processes in place to accomplish it. So, basically following the law and the rule, and that kind of models the process that we use to go forward. MR. TAKABA: The state is decentralized, and they delegate all of the purchasing to the departments. I think maybe that’s what we’re getting at is our processing different from other jurisdiction. The State Procurement Office does not do procurement. It’s all decentralized to the departments like how we do it with Public Works. MS. NICHOLSON: But is ours then centralized? Are you saying it’s a pretty centralized system? MR. TAKABA: Ours is centralized. MR. MASUDA: By Charter it’s centralized. Actually I know for sure some mainland municipalities, they don’t have requirements of centralized purchasing, but our Charter says we use centralized purchasing. MS. O’HARA: With the exception of DPW and now DEM. (Bill Takaba left at 11:35) MR. MASUDA: No, that’s still centralized. It’s a delegation. MS. CRAWFORD: It’s a delegation but still centralized under Finance Director. And I guess I would say that is by Charter, but also I would say I think that it’s efficient. It gives us the opportunity to see what we’re saying because requests come in and we purchase like items together to get best prices as opposed to every department just… I know you’re not recommending that necessarily but it’s almost the only other model I can think of. And since that one isn’t appropriate for us, what’s left for us to try to imagine outside the box comes more to just this paper flow we’re talking about here. And I think a lot of thought went into this and that’s not to say there might not be something else to do, but every step we do here, we try to make it as efficient as possible and we feel that everyone of these steps is necessary. MS. O’HARA: Does DPW also use the same contract? Contracts are often let for a period of time with the ability to extend for additional periods of time. And that’s what called an addendum to contracting. Does the department initiate addendums to contract or is that initiated by your department? MR. BENEVIDES: If the contract has been let to Purchasing, out of purchasing, then we would do all the subsequent supplemental agreements. If it’s done directly by Public Works then they would do it for construction. MS. CRAWFORD: So some contracts have option year in them, so that’s one that would, I mean unless they have a reason not to go with the option year, but that’s beneficial rather than going out to bid every year for some kind of service that you have several option years and if everything is going well then you would just renew those . 23