Lake County waives formal bidding, approves payments to Record B and Presort Center for legal publications and tax mailings

The Lake County Board of Supervisors on Monday voted unanimously to waive the formal bidding process for legally required newspaper publication and for printing and mailing services, ratified two vendor payments and approved a printing and mailing agreement.

Patrick Sullivan, county treasurer and tax collector, told the board that state revenue-and-taxation rules require certain notices to be published in the county’s newspaper of record and that the Lake County Record B is the only publication recognized by the county superior court and by county code for those legal notices. "Throughout the revenue and taxation code, there are various mandated legal publications we have to do throughout the year," Sullivan said.

Sullivan asked the board to find that competitive bidding was not in the public interest because only a single source exists for the publication requirement, and to approve payment for a past order and an annual cap for future publication costs. The board approved three related motions for the publication item: waiving the formal bidding process under Lake County Code section 38.2, ratifying payment of $7,892.37 for add order 0006900014, and authorizing payments to the Lake County Record B for legally required publication not to exceed $50,000 annually. Each motion carried unanimously (5-0).

Sullivan then described a related procurement issue for printing and mailing county tax bills, saying postage — which the county cannot negotiate — typically constitutes the largest portion of such contracts. "Postage is far and away the largest amount," he said, and because of how the county purchasing ordinance is written, even print jobs can trigger the full RFP process when postage pushes the total cost above thresholds.

Supervisor Sabati questioned the antiquated nature of the process and urged the county to pursue changes. "I'd love to see us maybe add that to our list of lobbying to try and make some of these changes because it's costly," Sabati said, and suggested amending the procurement code to carve out postage costs from competitive-bidding requirements.

Following that discussion, the board unanimously waived the formal bidding process for printing and mailing services under the same Lake County Code section 38.2, approved payment of Presort Center invoice number 112685 for $5,905.41, and authorized an agreement with the Presort Center for printing and mailing services in an amount not to exceed $200,000, authorizing the chair to sign. Each motion carried 5-0.

The treasurer noted that the county has not historically spent as much as the $50,000 publication cap in a single year but sought the higher limit as a margin for larger publications. The board did not specify additional conditions or amendments to the newly approved Presort Center agreement during the meeting.

All formal actions recorded at the meeting were approved by unanimous voice vote; no recorded roll-call of individual board member votes was provided in the transcript.