City of Lawrence

Finance Department

MEMORANDUM

DATE:	July 6, 2006
TO:	David Corliss
	Interim City Manager
FROM:	Steve Stewart, Central Maintenance Garage Manager
RE:	City Vehicle Purchases Under MACPP

Pursuant to your request, information on purchasing City vehicles under the MACPP contract is provided below along with a recommendation that the City decline to participate in the upcoming joint cooperative arrangement. We have changed our recommendation based on input from local vendors and their experience with the MACPP bidding process.

Background

The City Commission has expressed a desire to use cooperative purchasing opportunities as a cost saving mechanism. To that end, the City of Lawrence has been purchasing vehicles under the Mid America Council of Public Purchasing (MACPP) contract since 2003. This cooperative purchasing arrangement has allowed the City to work with other municipalities, school districts and counties to obtain lower prices through volume discounts.

Attached is a list showing the vehicles included in the 2006 budget that have been purchased this year. The list also indicates if the vehicle was purchased under the MACPP contract.

MACPP Cooperative Bidding Procedures and Recommendation

Upon request, the lead entity (currently the City of Olathe) sends out notification to all the participants of the cooperative and hosts a meeting to review bid specifications for all desired vehicle. Larger vehicles such as solid waste trucks or specialty items like police motorcycles are not include in the MACPP contract.

Once agreed upon, bid documents are sent out to vendors throughout the region, including the attached list of Lawrence vendors. The lowest bid is selected and the bid price remains valid through the full production year. The current MACPP contract prices became effective in October of 2005 and will remain in effect until September of this year. Unfortunately, for a bidder to participate the bidder must bid a specific vehicle for all entities – in the total quantities that they are requesting - seeking that particular vehicle, e.g. the bidder must not only bid for Lawrence’s requests but for all of the various municipalities requesting the same vehicle. Lawrence’s vendors indicate that such a large volume of vehicles means that they are unable to participate in this process. The City seeks wide participation in bidding, including local bidders, and does not want to exclude local bidders from participation because of the volume bundling of purchases from other entities. For this reason, staff is recommending that we not participate in this cooperative purchasing arrangement this year. Staff will monitor this issue in the future to look for cooperative purchasing arrangements that allow for local vendors to participate.