Travis County Commissioners Court
July 21, 2009,
Item 3
Number 3 a, discuss and approve revised Travis County purchasing policy and procedure manual to replace chapter 32 of the Travis County code.
3 b is to discuss and amend Travis County fixed as set policy and procedure.
manual to replace section 4.6.1.
of chapter 33 of the Travis County code.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners.
Travis County purchasing agent.
with me is my assistant Margaret brice who supervises construction of professional services and bonnie floyd who supervises commodity purchases and other nonprofessional services.
i have to give bonnie credit.
she pushes, pushes, pushes and that's why you got your backup late.
kind of blame it on bonnie.
actually what I wanted to do today, y'all did get this backup late was go through an 8-page power point pointing out the changes, and next week if you don't have any changes or concerns, bring it back and have y'all approve it at this time.
i just want to run through a power point presentation just to do the updates.
when we started this, the main update was going to be the legislative changes.
as we started looking into it, there were some other things that we wanted to do.
just background, the Texas local government code chapter 262, more common known as the county purchasing act, which is what we operate under, authorizes the purchasing agent to adopt the rules and procedures necessary to implement the agent's duties under that section and other sections of the law.
and it has to be approved by the Commissioners court.
when I was originally hired back in 90 -- think think it was 3, my task was to write a purchasing manual.
it took me two years because the county -- it's a very different morgues than most and there's a lot of elected and appointed officials who have authority.
but as everyone knows, the Commissioners court is the chief executive officer of the county to approves folks' budgets.
once the budgets are approved, then everything has to be spent through the county purchasing office.
we revised the manual back in February of '06 and now we're revising it today.
one of the major revisions that got us started on making this change was house bill 987, which was effective June 22.
the governor signed it.
this increases our competitive dollar threshold, which has been 25,000 for probably the last 10 years, and increased that to $50,000.
so all throughout the manual any references to $25,000 treasure holds are increased to $50,000 t law does say that anything under the competitive bidding limit the agent has to have policies in place that still ensures competition.
so our limits under $50,000 will continue to be that we will get three informal quotes, which we are now doing over our third party administrator bid sync which is saving us money.
we're finding that we are saving a lot of money.
so that's the first change.
the second change are hub goals and I'll discuss that in more detail on the next slide.
the next major change is the authority the purchasing agent and the Commissioners court to determine when to use a best value procurement in lieu of just a straight bid.
this is legislation that was passed back in '07 that we really haven't used or implemented.
we've talked about it several times, especially in one of our construction projects.
design build.
but this allows us -- harris county had this authority for several years.
we always joke in our meetings about the state of harris.
they always seem to get the law and we kind of follow behind them.
but what this does for us is if we make a decision that's in the best interest, that there was more things to consider than just the low bid.
that we can do a request for proposals and look at other factors.
and later on in the presentation that we have a definition of best value that I'll go over.
the fourth major revision, and mr.
hilly and I spoke this morning, he wants to verify that y'all can give me that authority, but was authority for the purchasing agent to modify enter local agreements similar to what the authority is now on contracts.
things like changing delivery -- the delivery or the method of delivery or changing the name of a contractor or assigning payments.
if you'll recall, I guess it was back in '06 when we had the original-when we revised this, y'all gave me that authority on contracts, and it cut in half the number of items that we were bringing to Commissioners court.
small changes like we added a dumpster at del valle.
i had to bring that to court.
just, you know, a contractor --
>>
>> [inaudible] I'm trying to recall.
there was a category where we would allow debt to happen opposed to where you had to bring it back.
>> yeah, we made that revision in '06.
>> yeah, I know, but I was trying to recall, if you will help me out, what were the categories -- as you said -- an example a dumpster.
there are often things that -- that you would have to bring back that are not dumpsters as far as determining what comes back before us and then what is done there.
>> the law says -- the law also gives the purchasing agent the authority if the court delegates it, which you have, to do change orders that are less than $50,000.
>> right.
i understand.
right.
>> and so that was -- we already had that authority, but there were minor things we didn't include and we were having to bring back to court every week that were basically minor changes.
>> and the money amount is the governing -- well, one of the governing factors.
>> what is?
>> the amendment of money.
>> oh, yeah.
anything over 50,000 in a change order.
>> dollars, cyd.
>> anything over 50,000 we have to bring to court.
and also there's a section that says that once an original contract is in place, if we modify that contract by more than 25%, that I have to bring it back to court.
so sometimes you'll see modifications for $500, but the original contract has been exceeded by 25% so all those come back to you.
>> okay.
all right.
>> so that is the other change as far as contracts.
on the next slide is our hub revisions.
if you'll recall, we adopted the city of Austin's goals, it was based on availability study they did several years ago n may of '08, the city did a disparity study and based to that study they changed their percentages for hub participation.
and if you'll look on your -- on the slide or on the power point, the categories changed slightly.
for example, in the professional services category, african-americans instead of 1.7% increased to 1.9%.
the same thing with hispanics.
it actually was 9.7 and went down to 9%.
and so forth.
so most of them actually increased except for the hispanic participation under professional services, construction and come modification disand nonprofessional services stayed the same.
the city actually revised their goals in January of this year and I felt it important to have the court's approval and blessing on these changes prior to us changing all of our documentation.
so that is the other change.
and I did note that the asian and native american categories were combined.
on the next revision, some of the smaller revisions that we made is there is a section on -- a new section on disadvantaged business enterprises.
if you'll recall, as we are doing more and more joint problems with the state of Texas and other state agencies mostly in construction, we require if that money is passed down to the county, we require to either adopt the federal government's mbe/wbe standards percentages or adopt the entity that we're doing business with.
it's taken a whole lot of staff time.
jason walker in my office and marvin worked with txdot along with sylvia lopez in my office and worked with the state so we would meet those requirements and be sure that we would get that money.
that's a change that we wanted to put into the manual.
the other change on that same page is our vendor tracking system.
about three years ago the Commissioners court approved us to buy some software that would help us to do better tracking of the payments that were made to the subcontractors by the primes.
it's a web-based software so that the firms can do this from their offices.
in fact, we are training broadson and associates right now so that they will be able to do that.
when they make payments to their subs, they go in and fill out this information.
then the subcontractors go in and they verify that they did receive their payment.
it's just another tool for us to have the prime contractors be responsible for making their goals and for us to verify that.
so that language was added.
in chapter 7, we already had an environmental or recycling policy.
we worked closely with charles williams in transportation and natural resources, and this language just reemphasizes our commitment to buying environmentally safe products and taking all these things into consideration, not just in construction but in the things that we purchase, even professional services.
there was also a bill that did not pass that dealt with green cement.
i had no idea what green cement was, but it has to do more with how they manufacture it and the process, keeping the dust down.
but these are the types of things that we encourage our vendors to do and so we wanted to increase that language.
the next is the best value language that I was mentioning earlier.
every time a session comes to town, they do all kind of stuff over there at the big house, and in the past, we could buy through what was called a catalog information systems vendor, d.i.r.
products, and there was a definition for best value that it was very specific to software and technology products.
now with the new law saying we can do best value for anything we felt like in our interest we felt like it would be better to put a definition of best value.
best value emphasizes value of a price and allow us to look at the total life services.
the initial price was ongoing and maintenance cost of that particular item or service.
what's our capacity for expanding or upgrading that.
what are the reliability factors for that product.
what kind of training does county staff need to be able to use that.
sometimes there's a lot of training that's involved in some of these, especially our advanced or complex software and hardware programs.
and the level of support that would be needed by us.
and we can also consider the reputation of the contractor, whether we've dealt with them in the past or not, whether they have done good business with us or not.
and also their overall compliance with our terms and conditions.
that also includes our hub program, whether they are committed to meet our -- our hub statistics and our goals.
so that -- that was added to give a definition.
>> so what's the source of the definition?
where did that definition come from?
>> well, it's sort of a best practice.
it's something in procurement and it's been sort of developed as we've gotten away from the low bid mentality.
people have this perception of government, we only buy low bid, low quality items.
that's not true.
so it's a definition that's progressed as we've adopted a more wide range look at what we're purchasing and the cost.
even a vehicle, you have that initial cost, but you have ongoing maintenance.
with some of the new hybrid vehicles, we don't have a history yet of what the maintenance and costs are going to be.
so it allows us to do that.
we kind of created the definition from best practices and definitions that we could find.
>> that's our definition.
>> yes, that's sort of our definition.
but it's based on someone else's definition.
i didn't make it up.
all right.
we also added a section on interlocal agreements.
we have an ongoing issue with interlocal agreements.
they come to Commissioners court often prior to us seeing them.
if it involves any sort of a purchase of a good or services or maintenance, those need to come through the purchasing office.
that hasn't changed.
that's been in the policy.
but we also wanted to emphasize that departments need to do a better job of getting that information to us before they bring them to Commissioners court.
and also in that same section is where we added the authority of the purchasing agent to modify interlocal agreements.
the next on the power point, we-as I mentioned earlier, years and years and years ago, probably 14 years ago, the state came up with what they called a catalog information systems vendor catalogs, and basically i.t.
firms could be on a list, and it's department of information resources, it's a state agency, and we could go into that catalog and we could look at different vendors and just negotiate with them.
in '07 legislative session, they did away with that, our ability to do that.
and that was a big change.
especially for ouri.t.
folks.
we're still able to turn those items around and get good pricing.
the one thing that we did run into this year as you all will recall, we are depending on the state d.i.r.
to have good contracts that ensure that we are covered if anything happens.
as you'll recall with our video cameras in our patrol vehicles, we had an issue.
and so what we will do now and I added this language is if it's a complex high-dollar procurement through d.i.r., we'll work with the county attorney's office to have a supplemental contract that the vendor will sign.
as you'll recall, we finally got panasonic to sign the agreement with us in case we had any warranty issues, that they would cover those.
we had tests and acceptance period before we paid.
that's something through experience that we've learned we need to do a better job at.
>>
>> [indiscernible].
>> sir?
>> we've all learned a lesson on that.
>> we've learned from our mistakes, luckily.
most of the time.
the new -- the next is a new section dealing with purchase of supply schedules.
this has been very confusing across all the procurement professionals in the state.
these are things we talk about at our conferences.
but we are allowed to buy things off the general services administration of federal supply schedules, things such as information technology items.
and then there's some -- under the -- after 9-11 there was a lot of homeland security items and grant moneys and so we were also available -- able to buy certain things off of that g.s.a.
schedule.
things like alarm signal systems, management systems, fire fighting rescue equipment, law enforcement security equipment, marine craft and related, special purchase -- special purchase clothing and those type products.
again, the federal government has secured these items and we're available to purchase them through them.
so we added that section.
then on exemption orders, as you know, or as you will recall, there are certain items that are exempt from the competitive bidding process.
things like emergencies, unforeseen damage to property, professional services, and we wanted to add a section that talked about the duration of exemption.
what has to happen before I can make a purchase that we feel should be exempted from competition, I have to come to Commissioners court with an exemption order and you approve that exemption order.
and there was some question in my office because we have some exemption orders that approved years and years ago and so what we wanted to say is take that needs to be the exception order approved by the court shall be in effect until it's rescinded by the court or unless a specific time period for the exemption is authorized in the order itself.
so if we came to you with an exemption tomorrow, say for a specific contractor for a specific project, that exemption order would expire at the end of that project.
we have exemption orders for things like medical supplies.
that exemption order is still in effect until the time I come back to court and ask for a new type.
like one that came to mind is the newspapers.
we were coming every four years asking for exemption order for the newspapers.
and we just think that's unnecessary.
to come back year after year.
the next change dealt with unilateral changes.
this was an update to modifications.
and what we added -- and I thought I had -- we added three things to my authority.
the ability for my office to make contract name changes without bringing them to court, my ability to assign contracts without coming to court, and the ability to make assignments of payments without coming back to court.
those are three areas that you need to consider whether you want me to have the authority to do that or whether you want those brought back to court each week.
>> the middle one, what kind of contracts are we talking about?
>> it would be any kind of contract, but the majority of these, I think, are -- we have very few in construction.
mostly we have assignment of payment under construction because the surety companies want to be paid.
we have one right now where the contractor has exceeded his bonding limits.
so the bonding company said, you know, we'll secure you if you will assign your payments to us.
so that's an example of a construction one.
a lot of the professional services, some of the nonprofits, they change their names.
i believe even our large office supply --
>> the name change doesn't bother me.
the second one does.
>> assignment of contracts?
>> yes.
>> what kind of contracts.
>> it is open ended.
>> we don't want to put that pressure on you, miss purchasing agent.
what page is that one on?
>> any time I have -- any time I have an issue or concern or if I think it's controversial, I do bring them to court.
letting you all take the bullet instead of me.
>>
>> [indiscernible] as far as a backup that I just assumed that they all permissive may options.
are any of it per se shell versus me.
>> well, I would have to defer to my attorney to answer those questions.
>> okay.
i really would like to --
>> I think almost all of those changes were made welcome back the past two sessions.
i don't recall a shell.
>> I just want to make sure because look at those bills that now are law.
and since they are law, it would just be good to know if there are versions in the bill that are permissive.
>> [indiscernible] where we shall have to do it instead of may.
it would be good to know what that is on both of these bills in the backup.
i mean the law now, not the bill.
>> judge, to answer your question, the contract wording that I just described is on page 19-1 of your manual.
it would be 8, 9 and 10.
those are the new added ones.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> then the next revision, as you know, when the hospital district was formed, my office was instrumental in helping them set up their procurement policy and procedures and at some point we parted our ways.
and so we are taking out of this the hospital district's procurement procedures.
we're deleting that.
and then we're removing all references to what is now called a health care district from the manual.
>> okay.
>> and also the last -- well, a couple months ago, the court approved a purchasing card policy just for the purchasing office.
we have four people in my office that have credit cards.
we've used them I think maybe five, six times.
we did during the flu scare, we used those cards to get hand sanitizers and all these things here quickly so it did benefit us.
mostly we're only using those if someone is ordering off the internet and the vendor won't take a purchase order.
we're really trying to limit the use of those because it is an administrative task to keep it all straight.
but we did add appendix a, which is policies and procedures.
throughout the policy manual there are web link updates.
some of the agencies, every time the legislature comes, they move functions.
we have the general services commission.
when I first got here, they were the ones who did all the purchasing for the state.
they split out and moved information type items over to department of information resources.
then in '07 they took a lot of the tasks away and gave them to the comptroller of public accounts.
so we've updated those agency names and titles throughout.
we also added just an additional section in chapter 7 on
>> [inaudible] procurement.
just wanted to emphasize public purchase ing is a public trust and very important that everyone adhere to ethical standards in the business community.
we also under 7-6 added a section on grants.
as you know, susan, our auditor, has told you and you know because you've been approving them, we're getting more and more grants coming in.
and we just wanted to reemphasize that -- that there are usually always in grants a procurement piece.
and we want to be sure that the departments send that information as soon as they get it so we can make sure that we get whatever they are getting granted funds for secured in a timely manner.
a lot of times we get a call and it's got to be within a couple of weeks and we need to find another way to buy it, an existing contract, so we just wanted to reemphasize when folks are using grant funds, it still has to go through the procurement process and they need to get us the specific language in the grants so we can ensure we are doing it in compliance.
as susan has told you time and time again, if we don't do it right, we might have to pay the money back.
we don't want anybody not to get their stuff and we don't want to have to give money back.
another revision, there was a a.g.
opinion a couple years ago that said we could not do quantum merits anymore so we deleted that as a reference.
so that is the bulk or that is the revision to the purchasing policies and procedures manual.
the next page, it's fixed assets.
there was also a house bill this session, 2859, that affected the advertising notice requirements for a county selling surplus property online.
what it says is that, number 1, we have to use a licensed auctioneer.
this only applies if an item has an estimated value of not more than $500.
and that -- that it satifies our notice requirement if the auctioneer posts the auction on his site for at least 10 days prior to the property being sold.
we have to test in a newspaper about our auctions.
but this allows us some -- some leeway in online purchases.
as you know, we've had an auction ear here in town, sheehan, that has been doing a lot of our auctions, especially on site auctions.
they are a really good resource because they store our property for us and they handle the auction and everything.
he has done some online auctions and then there's two other groups that compete with each other and we can purchase off of the cooperative agreements and there's another -- there's two others that we're using.
we've sort of been testing the I don't know line 5:00 shun to see if we're -- online auction and we are finding there's a bigger audience and sometimes we're getting more money by doing online.
>> here's my question.
number 1, doing the online versus the newspaper -- newspapers, I guess, as far as we place a notice that the county has an auction that we're asking folks to participate in, the website online system versus newspaper notices as far as money, is there a savings in that regard?
number 2, is the -- the question is how do we still assist those that are not computerized to the point that, you know, I don't have -- I do not have a computer so there's no way I can participate in this and I didn't know that the county was having an auction.
so how are we going to accommodate both?
because we're going from -- you are saying this online stuff, I hear that, but I'm also hearing something else.
is that going to divorce us from those folks who do not have computers?
>> I don't -- I can't really -- I don't know.
most of the folks that buy online are registered with these online auctioneers and they are sending out the notices to all the people that have signed up that they want to get notices.
we've only done about two or three this year online.
>> more than that.
>> I just want to make sure that those folks that aren't in the computer world that would like to also purchase anything from Travis County would be able to participate in the auction equally.
>> Commissioner, if I may, we are -- we are running an ad once a month in all of the hub newspapers and the chronicle saying that we have ongoing auctions and they need to check with the county -- we're not listing particular items, but we list we have ongoing options.
so hopefully --
>> I just want to make sure there's a balance.
that's what I'm after.
>> bring a copy of that to court next week or get it to us by Friday.
let's look at that.
>> we need to look at that.
>> okay.
all right.
and that's the bulk of the changes.
we feel like these changes will help make our process more efficient, make your Tuesdays more efficient.
i also want to thank jerome pilgrim, he's with our hub program and guerrero, I'm sorry, guerrero.
what did I say?
>> you didn't say that.
>> way back.
jerome does our newsletter for us every month.
he does a great job and he helped me put my power point together for me.
so we would ask that the court consider these revisions, and I know that the county attorney wants to take a look at some things.
i see the auditor here.
she might have some concerns or anyone else might have concerns.
i wanted to lay it out for you today and then give you a week to mull it over and we'll bring it back next week for approval.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> questions?
we'll be ready next week.
>> thank you.
>> it is important to get legal to sign off especially the recently adopted legislation that requires some of these changes.
i'd get legal's take on it.
>> I know that we've asked this question before when it was 25,000, and I believe the response was that -- $25,000 -- it's the authority of the purchasing agent to do that and nothing under that amount can be purchased by anybody other than the purchasing agent.
so that is something that --
>> let's see if legal agrees.
>> see if they agree with me today.
thank you all.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 3:40 PM