Finding 2023-005 - Procurement
Repeat Finding- See Finding 2022-007
Recommendation: We recommend that the City establish procedures to ensure that their purchasing policy follows Uniform Guidance procurement standards.
Action Taken: The City does follow Uniform Guidance procurement standards. In this instance, a vendor was selected under an emergency contract basis utilizing our waiver of bids policy. The entire country was awarded ARPA funds with water and sewer lining replacement being an allowable use of these funds. Due to the fact that there are a very limited number of vendors who provide this service, and the fact that there would be a significant number of municipalities seeking this service with the influx of ARPA dollars, as well as the fact that due to supply and demand, the cost for these services were escalating rapidly, the City wanted to be one of the first to engage with a contractor in order to secure a vendor in a timely manner before we would be unable to do so since the projects are long term projects and there was a time limit on when this money would need to be spent. Therefore, we knew it would not be possible to conduct our own bid. We chose a vendor off the COSTARS contract. I have attached a copy of the ordinance where we explained to Council our concern for our securing a vendor and our need to act quickly, which is why we originally initiated the purchase from City funds, before ARPA funds were distributed, and then replaced the City funds with ARPA funds once they were received.