The Los Alamitos City Council raised the authority of its city manager to spend up to $100,000 in some cases without Council approval, though the vote was not unanimous.
Actually, the Council resolution that contains the changes passed upon first reading but will only take effect after it survives the entire process of approval, which is expected.
Inflated prices and changes in project development were among the factors cited during the ongoing discussion in hiking the city manager’s authority and other changes in purchasing policy.
“The City’s procurement regulations, policies, and procedures are codified at Chapter 2.60 (Purchasing System) of the Los Alamitos Municipal Code (the “Purchasing Ordinance”). The Purchasing Ordinance was last amended in 2021. City Staff recommend the proposed amendments to the Purchasing Ordinance based on their experience working with the existing code and following a review of purchasing regulations in surrounding jurisdictions. The proposed Ordinance is intended to streamline the procurement process and provide anticipated gains in efficiency,” the staff report said.
While the policy is complex, it generally raises Simmons authority from $50 – $100,000 to approve purchases of supplies, equipment and services. The policy also delegates other authorities to the purchasing staff and does detail emergency operational procedures.
“This is on the agenda because of a number of projects moving forward and we have to put this in place also as a control measure,” said Finance Director Craig Koehler.
Further, he said “The updated coordinates adds language to better explain when exceptions would actually apply. These proposed modifications will better align with the opportunities to result in increased efficiencies to workflow and more efficient operations for the city.”
“Obviously, we go through our policies very frequently and try to identify ways that we might be able to actually gain some efficiency or be able to pick up a little bit of speed with the way that we do our work internally,” the city manager agreed.
“What we’re finding with all this is that every time we go to do a project, it takes about eight months from the time that you authorize the amount of money for us to go out and do something to go through the RFP process to go through the award process. We think that we can move faster than that. And so this item was put together in consultation with the bench standing committee,” he added.
Council member Emily Hibard, who voted against the change, said while she liked the proposed efficiencies offered by the change, “my challenge on this particular one is the struggles we’ve had with our finances.”
During her brief time on the Council, Hibard said the city’s financial statements had been pulled three times for various issues or concerns.” Hibard went further to name some specific accounting errors that have been made obvious and said “because of these mistakes I’ve seen in my short time on the Council, this is unfortunately not a policy I can get behind.”
Trisha Murphy, another Council member who has been critical of accounting errors, stopped short of voting against the measure but did abstain from voting at all. Murphy had requested during an earlier meeting to have that authority reduced from $100k to $80k, a request apparently rejected by the ad-hoc budget standing committee.
“Why is it the budget standing committee would be the one to make the decision,” she asked.
“That is a question for the budget standing committee,” said Simmons, “but I can say just anecdotally that the budget standing committee has more interaction with the budget and finances and more frequently than the council.
Murphy did not vote against the new policy, but she did abstain from voting at all. Mayor Tanya Doby, Mayor Pro-tem Tanya Doby and Council members Shelley Hassellbrink voted for the change.