City tweaks 'buy local' policy

SANDPOINT — After some legal drafting by City Attorney Scot Campbell, municipal department heads are on their way to more flexibility with purchases.

Council members asked Campbell to improve the city’s buy local policy after department heads said inflexible language limited their ability to save money. Campbell came back to the Administration Committee last week with a revised policy.

The new draft is set into three stages. In the first stage, the emphasis remains on buying locally whenever possible. In a case of a possible 10 percent savings, a department head can go outside the city to businesses elsewhere in the county. Finally, there are no geographic guidelines in cases of 15 percent savings or higher. This policy is limited to purchases below $5,000, both for clarity when it comes to audits and for purely practical purposes.

“(The policy) doesn’t apply to goods and services that are competitively bid,” Campbell said. “Local people can competitively bid and other people can competitively bid. When we’re talking large amounts of money, we’re also talking large costs to the city, potentially.”

While city officials found most aspects of the revised policy airtight, City Planner Jeremy Grimm mentioned that time-savings wasn’t factored into the language. In his line of work, repairs and maintenance need to  happen quickly when batteries fail or mechanical parts break. However, a quick search for a model number and credit card purchase on the Internet can have the problem solved in seconds as opposed to potential hours spent calling or combing local stores for the right items. And when city department heads have no end of tasks to accomplish, time always means money.

“I think we all want to support our community tremendously, but we do have to weigh the cost of doing that,” Grimm said.

However, the revised draft does contain language that the policy applies “whenever reasonably possible.” That phrase is included to accommodate situations like the one Grimm described.

“That’s why those words are in there  — to give you a little bit of discretion to say, ‘I didn’t buy locally because it was reasonable. I either had to get it immediately or I got a special deal on this,’” Campbell said.

Committee members agreed that the new language was well-crafted and sent it on to the full council for approval.

“I think (this policy) is really good,” Councilwoman Carrie Logan said. “I was particularly interested in the competitively bid items, and I think you addressed it really well.”