(June 2) An indication of just how much of a property tax burden county residents are bearing came this week when the board of supervisors authorized spending $150,000 to pay for the paper upon which the county property tax bills will be printed over the next three years.
The board ratified County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector Larry Walker’s request to issue a no-bid. non-competitive blanket purchase order to Newport Printing Solutions in an amount not to exceed $150,000, to provide property tax bill design and paper stock to the tax collector’s office for the period of June 2, 2015 through June 1, 2018.
According to Walker, who is prone to illeism and therefore often speaks about himself in the third person, “Costs for property tax bill stock average $48,000 each year, and are not expected to exceed $50,000 annually during the term of the three-year purchase order. In 2014-15, the tax collector distributed over 850,000 property tax bills totaling over $2.3 billion. Property tax revenue is used to fund key public services including education, police and fire protection, social, and public health services. The issuance of a blanket purchase order with Newport Printing Solutions will ensure that the tax collector has sufficient tax bill stock to generate and mail tax bills pursuant to California Revenue and Taxation Code Sections 2610.5 and 2910.1. Bill stock must have proper perforation and printing must be in the precise location for the high-speed remittance processing machines to correctly read and process payments efficiently.”
Walker offered a justification for awarding the non-competitively bid contract to Newport.
“The enterprise printers used by the information services department to print tax bills perform optimally when using paper that exceeds the manufacturer’s minimum requirements,” Walker stated. “In June 2010, the tax collector requested that [the county] purchasing [division] conduct a competitive procurement for tax bill paper. Newport Printing Solutions was a part of the solicitation, but since they did not have the lowest bid, they were not selected. Due to quality issues with the paper received from the selected vendor, both the annual secured tax bill form and the secured property memo form were returned to the vendor to reproduce. The sample paper received from the corrected order still had significant quality issues, resulting in excessive paper jams and misfeeds which resulted in an increase in time and administrative costs to correct and rerun the print jobs. To resolve the paper quality issue, the tax collector contacted Newport Printing Solutions which had supplied paper to the tax collector in prior years. The tax collector completed a non-competitive purchasing requisition with Newport Printing Solutions in September 2010. Since then, the tax collector has continued to purchase paper from Newport Printing Solutions on a non-competitive basis. Newport Printing Solutions has consistently provided quality paper and pre-printed forms.”