May 19, 2003 Minutes

Members in Attendance:

Maureen McIlvaine, Bucks County
Pete Navarro, Chester County
Renee Carpenter, Berks County
Kevin Sharp, City of Reading
Maura Sullivan, Bucks County
Barry Hitchcock, Lancaster County
Bill Irish, Northampton County
Kimberly Sangster, School District of Philadelphia
Price Morris, Lancaster City Housing Authority
Christine Parnau, Northampton County
George Nader, Lehigh County
Diane McKenzie, City of Allentown
Scott Brodt, City of Allentown
Ann Wertman, Lehigh County 

Visitors in Attendance:

John Hogan, School District of Philadelphia  (As a potential new PAPPA Member)
Terry Wagner, Berks County  (To hear today’s speaker)
David R. Forrest, Borough of Lansdowne  (To hear today’s speaker)

Meeting Location:  Bucks County Library Center, Doylestown, PA

Meeting Host: Maureen McIlvaine

President George Nader called the meeting to order at 10:20 AM.

Welcome to Jack Hogan, School District of Philadelphia, and Terry Wagner, Berks County Fleet Manager, visiting with us today.

In the absence of Mary Ann Ramey, a special presentation citing her service as the Past President of PAPPA was held for the next meeting.

Kudos to Nancy Bielawski of Washington County for completing her CPPO and CPPB re-certifications.

The Minutes of the March 17, 2003, General Meeting were reviewed.  Hearing no modifications, the minutes were approved as written following a motion by Bill Irish and a second by Kevin Sharp.

Treasurer Chris Parnau distributed Reconciliation Detail Sheets for the periods ending 4/3/2003 and 5/5/2003.  The ending balance on 5/5/2003 was $12,026.00.  After discussion, the Treasurer’s Report was accepted with a motion by Renee Carpenter and a second by Price Morris.  George asked Chris to include more detailed explanation of expenses on future reports.  This evidently is available with the software package being used.

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Awards - In the absence of April Lenhart, Committee Chair, discussion on the status of the revised Membership Recognition Award and Achievement Award was held over until the July meeting.

Finance - Judy Cole, Committee Chair, was unable to attend but had notified George that she had no report to offer.  Scott Brodt updated the group on the 501C3 Form and 501 Letter.  Bill Lund, the CPA hired by PAPPA to assist in this processing, is continuing his effort to reach finalization with Chip Watkins of NIGP.  Bill Irish has also e-mailed Chip Watkins and will follow-up with a personal phone call. It is anticipated the Pennsylvania Sales Tax Exemption will be complete within 6 weeks.

Legislative - Ann Wertman, Committee Chair, distributed a listing of new House and Senate Bills in the Pennsylvania General Assembly pertinent to procurement.  She noted the majority of these concepts are introduced during every two-year session and often several members in both the House and Senate proposes the same legislation.  Almost all the proposals remained in the Committee to which they were originally assigned for study and required appropriations.

Marketing - Mary Ann, Committee Chair, was absent and no report was offered.

Membership - George commented on the report he received from Oklahoma City where Steve Suder, Committee Chair, is giving a presentation on P-Card Procurement.  Elaine Vivaldi, Allegheny Intermediate Unit, and Bruce Shaw, Reading Area Community College, are the latest members to join PAPPA.  The group lost a member with the untimely death of Mary Ann Rimsky of Carbon County.  Linda Dopira has succeeded Mary Ann as Purchasing Manager.  Also, James R. Williams now has an e-mail address that can be located in the Membership listing on the PAPPA website.

Operations Guide - Diane McKenzie, Committee Chair, will have the update complete when she finishes the Table of Contents and converts the file for easy e-mail distribution.

ProD - Price, Committee Chair, reported the completion of the General Public Procurement Seminar on April 14-16 in Morgantown and Specification Writing on May 14 in Pittsburgh.  The “Contract Management” seminar scheduled in Pittsburgh on April 23-24 and “Contracting for Services” seminar scheduled in Morgantown on May 22-23 were cancelled due to low enrollment.  It appears that “How to Process and Evaluate Bids” schedule for June 20th may be cancelled for lack of registrations.  It was the feeling of the group that lack of funding in most municipalities as well as timing of seminars are the main problems which lead to these cancellations.  Price will be distributing the Chapter Educational Requirements Survey that will have a return date of June 5th.  The CPPB review to be held later this year will be conducted by Bill Irish and Maureen McIlvaine.  Appreciation was expressed to Kimberly Sangster for the donation of her CPPO Review CD to the group for usage by all certification applicants.

Website - Kevin Sharp, Webmaster, announced a new member spotlight featuring Hope Potter.  Kevin reported just under 3000 total hits to the website since its inception.

By-Laws - Diane, Committee Chair, had no update to offer.

Chapter Liaison - Price reported the Region 1 Conference will be November 5-7 in Annapolis, Maryland.   At this time there are no plans for a L3P conference in 2003.  Price is looking for a replacement for this role due to his many other involvements.  Kimberly and Maura asked about the responsibilities of this position, which were explained as working with other regions in promoting conferences.  Barry asked if there was going to be any joint meetings with other regions; South Jersey was mentioned.  Price will explore a joint meeting with his other chapter contacts.  Price will continue in this role until several possible candidates have the opportunity to learn more about the required duties.

NIGP Liaison - Bill reported that NIGP training seminars during March were not successful across the board; April’s schedule shows increased participation.  Bill also spoke about the revisiting of the NIGP regional structure that was last reviewed 5 years ago.  The make-up of the Board is restructured for the correct balance between regional and at large candidates.  Currently there are 10 regional board representatives and 5 at large members.  The move is to reduce the NIGP National Board to 12 members.  There is also discussion to restructure to 12 regions with board member representation and only 3 elected at large.  Our Region 1 is likely to be cut to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia, eliminating New York, southern New England and Puerto Rico.  Bill’s service on the National NIGP Board will end in 2003 with his replacement coming from New Jersey.    Also, Bill will forward his draft “Mentoring Program” report to George upon its completion.

Newsletter - April was unable to attend.  Chris noted that she has processed April’s request for Clipart for use in future issues of the PAPPA newsletter.  The software should be received later this week.

Strategic Plan - George has distributed the Strategic Plan to the Board and Committee Chairs for comment and update with a reply date of May 23rd.

Region 1 Conference - George announced that Mary Ann Ramey has e-mailed him and volunteered to be the Chair for the Spring 2004 Region 1 Conference. She has expressed a preference for the site to be the Philadelphia area on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  While the highlight of the Conference would be the visit by the NIGP President, Mary Ann mentioned possible speakers to be Governor Ed Rendell, Secretary Donald Cunningham, Deputy Secretary of Procurement David Yarkin, and our own Bill Irish.  Awards for Professional Buyer or Purchasing Manager of the Year as well as Membership and Longevity could also be presented during the forum.  A vendor fair would also be included.  Maureen and Diane volunteered to be part of the Conference Committee.  Concern was expressed that our planned Spring 2004 event may be in the same municipal budget year as the November 2002 Annapolis conference, however, moving away from Spring would bring it closer to the National Forum.

OLD BUSINESS:

The L3P Newsletter, which will contain our PAPPA brochure, has not been released.  George has updated the PAPPA brochure removing classes that have been canceled.

Mary Jo Reed e-mailed George an update on the 2003 PAPPA shirts.  They are scheduled to be delivered on June 6th and will be available at the local co-op meeting on June 11th and/or the July 21st PAPPA meeting in Lehigh County.

NEW BUSINESS:

George noted that while David Yarkin, Deputy Secretary of Procurement for the Commonwealth acknowledged and thanked everyone for the April 13th compilation of pros and cons on the usage of State Contracts gathered from PAPPA members, there has been no word since then.  Stan Richart was also meeting with Mr. Yarkin to give input from buyers in General Services on the State level.  PAPPA member Craig Wolford has offered to be a speaker at one of our meetings.  No response has been received on George’s two follow-ups to Mr. Yarkin’s offer to host a PAPPA meeting in Harrisburg.

The President thanked those who responded to Tom Young’s requests for sample bids on swimming pool chemicals.

George outlined the NIGP press releases that were distributed since the March 17th meeting and asked if there were any questions or comments.

Handouts which the President made available today included:

*Procurement Professional
*NIGP Pulse Results regarding survey results on retirement projections in the procurement field
*NIGP Seeks Networking Session Leaders for Forum
*Register Now for Upcoming “Webinar”
*NIGP Seminars Offered at Annual Forum
*NIGP Adds Research Papers to Website
*NIGP Membership Demographics Needed to Support Diversity Programs
*NIGP Deadlines Approaching
*Federal IT Schedules Now Available to State/Local Governments
*NIGP Joins Oasis Organization
*US Communities Adds Computer Products to List of Competitively Bid

The meeting was now opened to “Round Table” and included discussion as follows:

George reported a possible breakthrough for municipal governments to use GSA was reported in the Governing Magazine.  Voluntary vendor participation is allowed on Schedule 70 for security related items.  Additional information can be obtained by contacting Katie Meehan, GSA Regional officer, at 215-446-5093 or cell phone 215-205-0391.  Barry injected that again the question becomes negotiated versus bid as to whether many municipalities will be legally allowed to participate.  Barry has asked his Congressman to intervene.

Maureen asked if anyone else is using a bidding service.  Bucks County currently uses Demand Star who has initiated a $5.00 per download administrative fee.  PrimeVendor, Inc., another service complained that bids are no longer available free of charge.  Bucks County is also charging $5.00 for all bids picked up and $ 7.50 if they need to be mailed.  There was no one else present using a bidder service and the majority in attendance do not charge a fee to download bids from the website.

Diane inquired whether or not Bill had included piggyback language for all government entities to use his Procurement Card bid.  Bill said it is available to all entities to use.

Barry mentioned that Lancaster County has furniture, a receipt printer and cash drawer out for bid until May 30th.  He will provide a list to the secretary for distribution to the PAPPA membership.

The meeting was temporarily adjourned for lunch.

Upon reconvening, the group was addressed by George L. Schwarz, Bureau Director, City of Harrisburg, Bureau of Vehicle Management.  Mr. Schwarz explained the Vehicle Contract that he authored for the Capital City Co-op of Harrisburg.  Originally written in 1999, the bid award is based on a profit margin over the triple-net cost and covers vehicles and equipment.  Since its inception, the contract has been used by over 300 municipalities and facilitated sales of $35,000,000 last year.  The bid is a result of the provisions of Act 57 of 1998 being amended into Title 62, formerly known as the Commonwealth Procurement Code.  Assorted bid documents and the pricing sheets of successful vendors were made available for distribution to those in attendance.  It was asked that these documents not be shared with vendors.  Questions on the legality to piggyback this bid can be referred to Gary Ankabrandt, Chief Counselor for the Department of Procurement at 717-783-1982 or through the PennDot Solicitor, Mr. Michael Kline.

Upon completion of this presentation, a motion to adjourn was made by Chris Parnau and seconded by Kevin Sharp.

Being close to noon, the group broke for lunch as our Speakers were scheduled to participate in a roundtable lunch discussion.  David Yarken, new Deputy Secretary for Procurement for the Commonwealth will address improving the State contract process, usage of WSCA, etc.  Donald T. Cunningham, Jr., new Secretary of the PA Department of General Services will address the cooperation of State and Municipal Purchasing Agents.

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