Maple City Office Equipment sales manager Jeff Dam recently, said municipal council had a "heart," referring to council's late-August decision to award a contract to Maple City over Xerox Global Services. Xerox brought in the lowest RFP -- request for proposal -- but Maple City, which had the contract, was only a handful of percentage points off Xerox's numbers, and was a local company.
Administration followed RFP protocol and recommended Xerox, while council, in a 10-7 decision, opted instead to keep the business local.
"Even though they had the letter of the law with their processes, they're willing to look at the spirit of the law," Dam said after council's initial decision. "We have a track record with the municipality that is second to none."
And then Xerox comes along and rips out council's "heart."
The large company threatened legal action because council's decision violated the municipality's RFP protocol.
North Kent Coun. Bill Weaver said on Monday, "We learned about the need to adhere absolutely to our RFP protocol."
Council had no solid legal ground on which to stand to stay with the Maple City bid. It had to reopen the issue and make the change.
And now it's time to make another change -- to the RFP process. Maple City's proposal came in just three per cent higher -- $3,710 over the five-year contract period -- than Xerox. If council had a modest local-preference modifier to the RFP, say to within five per cent of the lowest bid, and the local bid met all the necessary criteria, this wouldn't happen again.
Yes, Xerox Global Services has a local office, but good luck finding a local number or address in the phone book, in either the white or yellow pages. According to Xerox's own website, the Global Services branch is its document outsourcing wing of the operation, not the office supply side of the business.
Municipal governments must take great care if they opt to give preference to local business. We've seen what can happen if they deviate from protocol. If a council were to always take a local bid, it would open itself up to the possibility of paying well above fair market value for supplies or service.
By keeping a five-per-cent threshold in place, council could give the local folks a bit of wiggle room when competing with much larger companies, while at the same time force them to keep the price as low as possible if they want the job.
Our local economy isn't exactly proceeding at a rapid pace these days. Helping local businesses -- which employ local citizens and pay property taxes -- makes good economic sense, if the cost difference is within reason.
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