Westchester County Executive George Latimer, Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone and Nassau County Executive Laura Curran have announced a cooperative buying plan for police vehicles – estimated to save around a $1 million. The announcement was made at a press conference in White Plains with Latimer, Bellone, and Nassau County Commissioner of Shared Services Melissa Gallucci.
“Our administration is exploring every avenue to reduce the burdens faced by Westchester County taxpayers without cutting essential services and while maintaining our most important of functions,” said Latimer. “This shared buying program allows us to do both. Thank you to my partners in government on Long Island for their work on this shared initiative – I hope this is the first of many.”
The shared services initiative allows for the respective counties, along with the towns and villages that comprise them, to cooperatively purchase more than 200 police vehicles among the group. The strategy was to combine the three counties’ aggregate purchasing power into a single request for bids, in order to leverage better pricing. The discussions on this agreement began late last year, the bid was published by Westchester County on Jan. 25, and bids were returned Feb. 14.
“I applaud my partners in Westchester and Suffolk for joining in this shared bid that will save us all money while improving public safety for our residents,” said Curran. “My administration will continue to pursue innovative and collaborative solutions like these whenever possible.”
Bellone added: “This cooperative effort will save taxpayer dollars and is further proof that we can govern more efficiently when we work together. We fully expect this will set the stage for additional shared services agreements between other counties in a variety of different areas. I thank George and Laura for their continued partnership and willingness to reach across borders to save taxpayer dollars.”
Westchester County, acting as lead agency for the three counties, selected Beyer Ford from New Jersey in a bid that will allow all participating governments to share total potential savings off list pricing, including discounts off both the base price of the vehicles as well as options. Approximately 30 local governments across the three counties, as well as Westchester, Suffolk and Nassau acted together on a solicitation in January seeking the lowest pricing on police sedans, utilities and trucks.
The participation level among local governments may well increase as others piggyback their purchases off of their contract – and every participating local government may choose their own “options package” for their own vehicles.
This shared purchasing agreement will be for three different vehicle types, including the police Super Crew 4WD pickup, police hybrid sedan and police hybrid and gas AWD utility SUVs.
