2019-02-26_PWETC_Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Public Works Director Culver provided a brief review on the Purchasing Policy listed in the staff report dated February 26, 2019. Chair Cihacek stated the Statue of reference for this item should be 16C.073, Purchase and use of Paper Stock; Printing. He stated Mr. Culver could also include in the ten percent threshold because that is part of the Statute for paper products. He stated he did not really like the wording "as per Minnesota Statute and the EPA" because the City is not under the jurisdiction of either. The City has the option to be placed under the jurisdiction. He would probably word the sentence to read "In accordance with" or "under the advisement of to make it clear that this is not a mandate to the organization but something the City is choosing to accept as a standard. Chair Cihacek asked staff if the City buys off of State CPV contracts, he noted Mr. Culver may not know that answer. He reviewed what the State CPV program is. Mr. Culver stated the City does use State contracting for a lot of items already, but he was not sure if the City was using it for office products. He noted it is something staff can look into. Member Misra asked if there is anybody on staff that is going to be keeping an eye on this Citywide. Encouraging, training, that type of thing. Mr. Culver stated Ryan Johnson is the City's sustainability officer within his job title. That is something the Department heads need to work through. The heads of the different departments need to figure out how to report this. He will ask staff that whenever a decision is made to go with a friendlier environmental product to let him know what the cost implications are and what the product was in order to record and track the product. Hopefully some actual cost savings can be seen by doing this. He noted staff will try to work with the EPA on this. Member Misra thought those are all good ideas but wondered if there should be some attention to the implementation and to how this might be coordinated. Chair Cihacek stated he did not disagree but thought if the implementation was too specific it will start restraining the nature of the policy. Given the way the City is going it might make more sense to pass this policy and also ask to increase the resources. Member Misra thought to pass a policy without any sort of attention being paid to who is overseeing it is not wise. Chair Cihacek thought maybe the responsible party for this policy is the Department of Public Works who can come up with a program for training, education, auditing and compliance of the policy. Page 5 of 11