How Does The City Buy Things Pt. 2
A small win and a small lesson in local government.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
It has been a bit of a slow news drip lately and honestly, surviving this cold snap has been a test of the ol’ mental health so apologies for not much action on the newsletter front.
SPEAKING OF COLDSNAP (nice segue, Darrin), I attended a handful of Coldsnap events last week as both an audience and a volunteer and I just need to shoutout the organizers and volunteers and just the overall VIBE of that festival. The event sold out almost every evening show and had wildly successful turnouts to the workshops and daytime events.
I can say with a good degree of confidence that dragging my butt out of my house at 7:30pm on a weekday -25C night felt like an impossible task but doing so definitely pulled me out of a pretty dark winter blue spell so I am just so grateful for this event.
(A few random clips I got from the event that will eventually be some little pieces of marketing for next year’s event).
ANYWAYS. That’s my pre-amble. Now into the amble.
I wanted to make a newsletter updating about some movement in the Darrin Rigo Has Beef With Procurement Policy situation because we have our first positive movement in almost 2.5 years so here’s an update.
Before proceeding, I would say it’s very important to go back and read Part 1 I wrote back in the Fall as we’re going to have some heavy spoilers in this one.
Link to “How Does The City Buy Things?”
Trump’s Tariffs and Local Procurement
OKAY. Now that we’re all caught up, I wanted to provide an update.
In the wake of Trump’s Tariff threat, there was a scramble across all levels of government to provide messaging - check packaging for Canadian labels, shop local, learn about “Canadian made” vs “Product of Canada”, etc etc etc.
City Councillors weighed in on various platforms but, most noticeably to me, Councillor Sampson posted this on LinkedIn:
If you’re familiar with the subject matter of Part 1, then you probably keyed in on the same piece of his message that I did - “we already push the legal limits of our RFP process to prioritize local businesses” - which, from the perspective of a local business that lost a sizeable RFP to an American/Canadian owned business, and has attempted (and been shot down) to work with the City on improving procurement policy, this felt pretty hard to read.
I think this is where I need to emphasize a valuable lesson I have learned in my 30’s versus the annoying social media keyboard warrior I was in my 20’s:
Just pick up the phone, Darrin.
There was absolutely a social media instinct to get the ol’ keyboard fired up and bring the FURY but instead - I just sent Kyle a text. He asked if he could call me and we talked for about an hour. It’s honestly a much more boring story than how the alternative might have played out but it was a good conversation - not one where we agreed on every single point, but one where I genuinely felt like Sampson was working to understand why I felt A) discouraged by his post and B) understanding my grievances with the current state of procurement by the City.
For me, I think it also helped me understand that it’s really hard to care about everything. Sampson has his list of priorities and objectives, and like we talked about in Part 1, procurement just isn’t on most people’s radar because it is so inherently boring and such a laborious piece of government. I could understand how the nuances could be missed, or even possibly misunderstood.
A Motion Is Passed
Coincidentally, that night, there was a City Council meeting - the focus of which was definitely spent on the OCP and that’s a topic we’ll get to in an upcoming newsletter.
But inside the minutia of government, Sampson brought forward this Motion:
That Council DIRECTS staff to prepare a report highlighting opportunities to improve the City of Prince George’s procurement practices, with considerations given to the correspondence from th ICBA, as well as the emerging "social procurement" practices being adopted by some municipalities, and that the report include recommendations to ensure procurement policies remain open, competitive, transparent, and most importantly that are beneficial to the local economy.
A pretty narrow pass with Klassen, Frizzel, and Polillo opposed (and Skakun absent).
I want to pause for a moment and notice the 3 Councillors voting this motion down - a motion that, at its core is beginning the process of asking the City to find better ways to procure local contractors. They all had their reasons but I struggled to grasp any of them, to be honest - you are welcome to view the video discussion here.
I don’t want to celebrate anything too early - honestly, this is a relatively small wave of government action in a sea of other priorities but as someone who spent a good portion of 2023 looking for any way to move this forward (including talking to other Councillors), any kind of revival on this case feels worthy of a small fist pump.
Zooming Out
Writing a whole newsletter off the back of a “motion to direct staff to create a report on…” feels like making a mountain out of a mole hill but I want to try to explain why I’m doing this.
This, to me, is local government working.
We elect people who we hope will listen to us, who will champion the issues that are important to us, and we put our hand up where we feel we need to.
I have historically been critical of our City Council. I have historically been pretty critical of Kyle Sampson. This doesn’t mean anyone is getting any hall passes from the great scorn of Darrin’s newsletter (ooOOOoo scary) but it does help me appreciate the function of local government in a more rounded way.
I think that’s why I feel like it’s important to call out a win when it happens, even a small one because it does renew some of my faith in how this all works. Zooming fully out, it feels especially relevant in the wake of watching many of these systems and institutions be recklessly dismantled South of the border.
Anyways, that’s all I got for today! Stay warm.