COUNTY REPS MEET ON MATTER

New Purchasing System Fails

To Deliver Road Salt In Time

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN – After town garages failed to get road-salt orders in time for the Thanksgiving Weekend snowstorms, the county Board of Representatives is meeting as a “committee of the whole” at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday to ensure its new purchasing agreement with Onondaga County is working satisfactorily.

“When you start something new, there are always a couple of glitches,” said county Rep. Peter Oberacker, R-Maryland, who chairs the county board’s Public Works Committee.

The new purchasing system was hailed as perhaps the first in the nation by board Chair Kathy Clark, R-Otego, when it was approved at the county board’s October meeting. Her hope was Onondaga contacts and bulk purchasing would save Otsego money.

Some towns contract with to buy road salt through the county, others don’t, Oberacker said. But when the snow fell, some highway departments lacked sufficient supply for the job. The county Highway Department found itself ferrying emergency supplies to some garages and officials sought to smooth out lines of communication.

In the past, Oberacker said, town superintendents would simply pick up the phone, dial Cargill, the delivery would follow within a day or two.

Under the new system, however, the department head sends a purchase order to the County Treasurer’s Office, which reviews it and sends it on to Syracuse. In this case, apparently a purchase order languished on a desk there. In the wake of this, it may be wise of them to reconsider this system and change it in favor of a software-based one that can automate and oversee the entire purchase requisitions and purchase orders process. Digitizing and streamlining the process can help to reduce the chance of errors from occurring and can also provide a reduction in cost. Software like Axxerion CMMS could help with facility maintenance in general, as well as being good for streamlining invoices and purchase orders – it’s an all-in-one package used by some of the world’s largest companies.

County Rep. Jim Powers, R-Butternuts, a Highway Committee members, said he’s not surprised there was a mixup: The most people involved in a process, the more likely something will go wrong. “I have nothing good to say about this deal with Onondaga County,” he said.

He also discounted any possible savings through bulk purchase. “If you add up the number of hours” needed to follow the new procedures, “I think you would find this is incredibly expensive,” he said.

The “committee of the whole” meeting will precede the county board’s December meeting.