Las Vegas trying to get lead out of spending woes

Monday, March 22, 1999 | 10:58 a.m.

The city of Las Vegas has spent too much on pencils and paper clips -- $80,000 too much.

Now the task for city supervisors and the Las Vegas Audit Oversight Committee, which found fault with the way the city awards bids for office supplies, is to make sure the city doesn't spend twice that to resolve the problem.

During a public meeting Friday, committee member Scott Higginson, a former city councilman, said he hopes the city doesn't "have to hire two people to check on it so that it costs more to fix it."

Committee Chairman Bill Martin, president of Pioneer Citizens Bank, responded that "closer supervision," not more people, is the answer.

"We need to do a better job with how the proposals are handled to eliminate potential abuse," Higginson said after the meeting.

Martin said the city has 970 contracts worth more than $10,000 annually. Because of that, measures have to be taken at the purchasing level to make sure the city is getting the best deal.

"For better internal control, perhaps each department should initial (the supply orders) to show that the price that is listed in the catalogs is the price that was paid," he said.

The city currently spends $300,000 a year on office supplies.

After the audit was made public, City Manager Virginia Valentine said the city would notify the vendor, Advance Marketing, that the contract will have to be rebid.

Valentine said that, under the terms of the contract, the city will continue to receive office supplies from Advance Marketing for a short period so that it does not run out of necessities.

In 1997, the city awarded the contract for supplies to Advance Marketing after years of using Office Depot.

The audit found fault with the bid evaluation method, which was based on 21 randomly sampled items along with the 160 most commonly used items. The two bid amounts were then combined, and Advance won the contract.

However, after the bid was closed, the city's Purchasing and Contract office submitted a request to the City Council to reject all bids because of "ambiguous language" in the bid documents.

Only Advance Marketing rebid for the office supplies and was awarded the contract with four one-year renewal options.

The committee agreed to review the office supply matter in six months to see if progress has been made.

The committee also decided Friday that its audit reports will not be public record until after city officials have had a chance to respond.

That decision comes on the heels of the release of the office supply audit, which was completed March 9. It did not include responses from the various city departments or the city manager's office.

"It is a matter of what is a complete document," Higginson said. "And that is when everyone has had a chance to have responded."