Our city council created the “Hire El Paso First” local business purchasing preference policy. Good work.
Pay to play
Actually a local business has to enroll in the program and pay an application fee of $150 dollars. Maybe the purchasing department does not know who the local businesses are or how to prove that they are local.
What does a business get for their $150 payment? They could get up to a 5 point evaluation advantage over an out of town business.
Unless
Unless, according to the city web site, the city choses to use a buy board, or the purchase is for telecommunication or information services, or if there will be a construction contract for over $100,000. Maybe local businesses aren’t good enough to compete for larger jobs.
Another exemption from the program is when the city decides not to buy from the local bidder.
This sounds like extortion to me.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
It plays to Niland’s alternate ‘revenue stream,’ though, doesn’t it? And, yes, one more way the City pays lip service to logic and to serving the local community.
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Pay as we laugh all the way to the bank then screw you over by giving the good contracts to out of towners without blinking an eye!
I still say they need to make readily accessible the “statements” of how much we owe on all the ongoing projects, how much we’re paying, and when they will each be paid off (realistically). I cannot believe we’re still struggling to pay off the Plaza by raising meter rates.
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Who says that any extra revenue from meters would be used to pay off the Plaza? That money can effectively go anywhere. Not fair that the City is trying to make the Plaza the scapegoat!
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“Hire El Paso First” is code for “Which Burrito Truck do we want to have on the site of the next project we are doing for Paul Foster and Woody Hunt?”
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“Maybe local businesses aren’t good enough to compete for larger jobs.”
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There is some truth to this or, more accurately, local businesses do not always have the product or expertise to bid honestly on contracts, especially the ones involving technology. I experienced this while seeking bidders for large technology purchases during the BTOP program that I ran for 2 1/2 years.
We tried to hire locals, but for some of the large lists of technical products, local firms did not carry these items, so we used the buy boards. Had we used the local firm, they would have used the same buy board and just added a markup. Since is was a federal sponsored project, there was the requirement to purchase the low cost bid, not just the local bid.
There are some good local technical firms, but really professional expertise and attitude is scarce here. The IT Dept liked to business with familiar firms and were somewhat closed-minded toward those with new and innovative ideas, IMHO.
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There’s no surprise here. We live in a state where “pay to play” is openly promoted at every level of government, especially at the state level under Perry.
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Maybe — just maybe — the City will issue an RFP for one the services or products my company provides. They haven’t requested one for over 3 years but the City thinks we should pay $150 just in case that happens. Hire El Paso? It’s just another way for the City to collect money from the thousands of El Paso companies.
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