Committee approves cooperative purchase agreements for brush-collection truck and solar lighting

The Metropolitan Council Transportation & Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday approved two cooperative-purchase agreements to buy a brush-collection truck and solar lighting equipment for the Metropolitan Department of Transportation.

Council member Allen questioned the procurement savings on the larger equipment contract, noting the agenda listed a $55,000 saving on a roughly $1 million contract and asking whether the department had compared the cooperative agreement to state contract pricing. "This is one of these where we're saving $55,000 on a million dollar contract, which seems like a very small saving," Allen said.

Matt Purvis, council liaison for the Department of Transportation, Multimodal Infrastructure, said procurement staff negotiated the cooperative agreements and that the buyer-supplier relationship under the cooperative contract can offer maintenance and future-service benefits beyond the immediate price difference. "Having the cooperative is just — there’s some minimal savings, but I believe there’s additional possibilities of future maintenance potential. It's just better connection to the supplier for what we're trying to get," Purvis said. He added he could follow up with procurement or the budget committee to confirm whether the state contract was compared.

Councilman Brown asked whether the solar lighting contract allowed the city to require dark-skies-compliant fixtures. Purvis replied that NDOT’s lighting work is dark-skies compliant. "Everything that we do related to our work in the department with lighting is dark skies compliant," he said.

Both resolutions passed by voice vote as part of the committee’s consent business. The committee recorded an 8-0 vote in favor of the consent package that included these items.