Nassau County Executive Edward Managano said said this week 18 more Nassau County municipalities and school districts had expressed interest in joining a cooperative purchasing council aimed at cutting the cost of government by permitting the bulk purchase of goods and services.
But local officials continue to express doubts about just what kind of deal they’re being offered.
“The concept is good. How it’s being implemented is the other issue,” said North Hills Mayor Marvin Natiss.
The Village of North Hills is among a total of 23 Nassau County municipalities school districts that have notified the county of its interest, according to a press release from Mangano’s office last week. But Natiss said North Hills needs more information before agreeing to join.
The Long Island Intergovernmental Purchasing Council was created in August by a joint resolution signed by Managano and Suffolk County Executive. Five municipalities including the Viillage of Mineola expressed an interest in joining shortly after the initiative was announced.
“As we continue to search for ways to save taxpayer dollers, it only makes sense to have more districts and governments join our efforts to protect taxpayers from wasteful spending,” Mangano said in the release. “The invitation stands for all municipalities to join us in this cost-cutting initiative.”
Mangano recently said he believes the county could help school districts offset whatever increased costs they face in the future when the county guarantee of property taxes is eliminated, a move proposed by Mangano that was opposed by school superintendents across the county.
In his press please, Mangano said the the Village of Laurel Hollow, which became the seventh municipality to officially join the consortium, as calling their decisiion a “no-brainer.”
But North Shore officials are not so sure.
Natiss said the purchasing council puts too many constraints on those who sign up. Among those is a restriction on a member of the cooperative buying outside of the cooperative curing their first year of membership.
“There is a constraint,” said Natiss, referring to that first-year rule, which states in its by-laws that a member “cannot issue a request for purchase or solicitation.”
Natiss said the cooperative also aims to restrict its bidding to deals with Long Island vendors, which Natiss sees as another problematic restriction.
“That to me is an issue. If I’m stuck with their low bidder, that’s another issue for me,” Natiss said.
Natiss noted that any member can opt out of the cooperative with 60 days notice, but Natiss seems disinclined to join. North Hills plans to address the issue during its Dec. 15 village board meeting.
“Some of the constraints may become a problem for municipalities,” Natiss said. “Even though the concept it good, we may decide as a group not to do it.”
Great Neck Superintendent of Schools Tom Dolan said that, as he understands it, opting in means being restircted to using the purchasing council as the school district’s sole purchasing agent for the next three years.
“We’re not entirely comfortable delegating our purchasing authority,” Dolan said. “We think we do a pretty good job and we’re not content with giving it away unless some other questions are answered.”
The school district’s attorneys are currently reviewing the purchasing council’s offer, according to Dolan.
Herricks Superintendent of Schools John Bierwirth said he is pleased the county is focusing on cost savings through its bi-county cooperative, but he also said there are still questions unanswered about the parameters of participating in the cooperative group.
“The concern that’s being raised is if you sign onto this, whether you are committed to all of your purchases through the Long Island Purchasing Council,” Bierwirth said. “What we do right now is we look at a variety of cooperative bids and we pick the best one.”
Bierwirth said Herricks examines bids from BOCES, the state office of general services, and other buying cooperatives, and sometimes can still strike better negotiated deals with local vendors. Bierwirth said he’s interested in finding out more about the purchasing council, but he’s clearly doubtful about said he would be “very reluctant” to have Herricks opt in if purchasing through the cooperative is mandatory.
“Capitalism works in my mind by keeping people on their toes, by not having monopolies,” Bierwirth said, adding that “the ability to keep those coops on their toes, and to keep the people who bid for them on their toes” is what makes his purchasing system work efficiently.
One school board attorney familiar with the terms of LIPC membership said its terms seemed too restrictive.
“I think it’s designed to get everybody signed up and boxed in,” the attorney said.
The attorney said that the LIPC agreement obligates each village or school board to purchase everything through the bi-county cooperative unless it is not in the “best interests” of the respective municipality or school district. That leaves plenty of room for interpretation of what “best interests” means, the attorney said.
“It takes away the discretion,” the attorney said. “You’re locked in unless you can make an argument that it’s not in our best interests for this contract. There are a lot of things that at the very least are unexplained at this point.”
A spokesperson for the county executive’s office said county attorneys are currently reviewing the language in its by-laws with the intention of allaying misgivings among school board officials on certain terms specified by the three-year agreements they would sign
The county lists the villages of Roslyn Harbor, Hewlett Bay Park, Kings Park, Stewart Manor, Plandome Heights, East Rockaway, Lynbrook, Upper Brookville and Long Beach along with North Hills as prospective municipal participants. The East Rockaway, Elmont, Roslyn, Valley Stream, Levittown, Long Beach and Hewlett-Woodmere as school districts that are interested.
But thus far, the initiative has the villages of Mineola, Patchogue and Northport and the towns of Oyster Bay and Brookhaven are the charter members. The Laurel Hollow Village Board opted in last week, according to the county executive’s office.
“In this tough economy, any time we can bring various levels of government together to provide real savings to our taxpayers, we’re doing the right thing,” said Mineola Mayor Jack Martins after Mineola did last month.
From the perspective of Mineola Village Clerk Joseph Scalero, it simply give Mineola more latitude on seeking good purchasing options.
“By having more options, it gives us more opportunities for savings. This is one more avenue that you can opt into,” Scalero said.
Mineola still does have the option to take bids outside of the purchasing council, according to Scalero, who said the cooperative also has a mechanism to enable members to initiate requests for proposal that could translate into a collective purchase among purchasing council members.
“One of the unique features of this is that they’ve put in a mechanism, not only for a bid to go out, but for targeted specifications,” Scalero said.
The purchasing council states that any member can opt out of any bid it puts out. So far, it has provided its fledgling membership a bid request for multipurpose office paper. It has another bid in the coming up, for road salt to melt ice on roadways.
“Salt is salt,” said Scalero. “If they can get a price for 1,000 tons of salt and divide it up, we all pay the same price based on that number of tons.”
