Santa Cruz County Grand Jury
• 2014-2015
Transparent, Fair, and Cost Effective? a Review of Contracting Practices in Santa Cruz County Government
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 5 findings
F1
The loopholes in Santa Cruz County procurement policies such as the Exceptions to the Competitive Process and Sole Source Requests in the PPM allow some professional service contracts to originate, or to be continually renewed, without competition.
Related Recommendations (3)
R1
The General Services Department should exclude expert and professional services 9 from the Exceptions to the Competitive Process clause of the PPM. (F1)
R2
The policies and procedures manuals of the County Administrative Office should require an RFP process for the renewal of all multiyear professional service contracts. (F1)
R3
In the event of a sole source request for a professional service, the County Administrative Office should ensure that criteria identified in the “Justification for Sole Source, Sole Brand, or Standardization” form are strictly applied. (F1, F2)
F2
Based on the documentation that we were provided, the Grand Jury could not determine that the sole source provision was correctly applied.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3
In the event of a sole source request for a professional service, the County Administrative Office should ensure that criteria identified in the “Justification for Sole Source, Sole Brand, or Standardization” form are strictly applied. (F1, F2)
F3
As the result of errors in the CAL categorization, numerous contracts did not receive appropriate Board of Supervisors review.
Related Recommendations (1)
R4
The County Administrative Office should list the dollar amount and the percentage change from the prior year for each contract in the CAL. This list should be ranked based on the percentage change. (F3)
F4
The CAL Section II allowable percentage increase has not been changed in more than 20 years. It remains at 10%, a much higher rate than the CPI.
Related Recommendations (2)
R5
The County Administrative Office should modify Section II of the CAL to use an inflationary index set by the BoS instead of the current 10% allowance. (F4)
R6
The Board of Supervisors should set an inflationary index such as the CPI + 3% as the threshold for annual contract review in Section II of the CAL. (F4)
F5
It is difficult for the general public to access professional service contracts on the Santa Cruz County website because the website is neither intuitive nor complete.
Related Recommendations (1)
R7
The County Administrative Office should create a central repository containing all County professional service contracts on the Santa Cruz County website that can be easily located and searched by the general public. (F5)