Department of Finance
Reference: Procurement Waiver of Solicitation for Fleet Vehicles and Equipment
To: Mayor Gregory Mills and Members of City Council
Through: Michael P. Martinez, City Manager
Prepared By: Catrina Asher, Director of Finance
Kelsey Archuleta, Procurement & Contracts Manager
Date Prepared: October 17, 2023
PURPOSE
To request Council's approval to purchase fleet vehicles and/or equipment priced at or below MSRP or Kelley Blue Book value directly and waive formal solicitation requirements.
BACKGROUND
Municipal Code requires that purchases over $50,000 be formally solicited. This requirement can be met through a formal process administered by the City or through cooperative purchasing (e.g. state award contracts).
The 2024 Budget includes funds for the purchase of standard fleet vehicles and equipment. These purchases are facilitated by the Facilities & Fleet Department. The most common way to purchase new vehicles/equipment and meet procurement requirements is to utilize cooperative agreements. These agreements generally allow for specific ordering windows and have limited inventory available. When inventories become eligible for order placement, City staff are consistently responsive during the date-specific ordering window. However, lead times on successfully placed orders through these programs currently extend up to 78 weeks from the date an order is placed. Order fulfillment is often prioritized by purchasing volume; therefore, agencies purchasing in larger quantities than the City of Brighton more frequently attain the vehicles ordered through these programs. Additionally, dealerships that have been awarded cooperative agreements by other agencies have been unable to establish base pricing for the 2024 model year as the timeline is continuously moved later into the year by the manufacturers.
These challenges have made utilizing cooperative agreement programs slow or unfeasible for the City's fleet. City staff are able to find opp...
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