The Aurora Council Meeting Agenda for this Tuesday October 27, 2015 will cover many items but there are a couple of items of interest that we thought to share.
Consider the Notice of Motion by Cllr Kim [2015-10-27 Council Agenda, pg. 52] proposing changes to the Town’s Procurement Policy in attempt to address issues raised during the last Council Meeting of Tuesday October 13, 2015 surrounding the process the Town used to select a supplier for the significant undertaking of L.E.D. Street Light Procurement in Aurora.
Rather than selecting a supplier following the typical advertising requirements with RFP (Request For Proposal) process and considering competitive solicitation, the Town was able to ‘piggyback on the results of the competitive procurement process of another government agency or public authority such as Local Authority Services (LAS)‘, something that Mr. Mar, Director of Legal and Legislative Services/Town Solicitor confirmed to Council was permitted by the Town’s current Procurement By-law.
So in Cllr Kim Notice of Motion, he suggests additional conditions be added to the Town of Aurora Procurement Policy to allow the Town to enter into a ‘Piggyback arrangement‘ only if it retains freedom to conduct its own competitive solicitation (RFP) for bids; and all relevant information is disclosed related to costs/fees, cancellation charges, the names of all bidders and their contract bids. It will be interesting to see how Council chooses to proceed.
“A policy is a deliberate system of principles to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes.”
Another item worth mentioning is information received from the Regional Report, York Regional Council Highlights – October 15, 2015 [2015-10-27 Council Agenda, pg. 54], specifically related to the York Region water and wastewater program. It sounds like to achieve full cost recovery a new price structure for water and wastewater services was approved by York Regional Council.
Taking effect ‘April 2016 the Regional portion of an average household’s monthly water and wastewater bill will increase nine per cent annually (9 %) for the next five years.’ Ouch! The report goes on to explain and justify ‘full cost recovery pricing‘ and what it means to both residential and business services. There’s not much that can be said about these types of increasing costs except be prepared for more increases in the future and your best protection is always to try to consume less.
Those were just a couple of items that caught our attention. The entire agenda can be found on the Town of Aurora web site.
