No City Hall retreat on 'buy-local' resolution

CEDAR RAPIDS - The City Council's Procurement Committee on Monday got an initial report on how the council's three-month-old “buy-local resolution” is working.

No one on the four-member committee said anything about modifying the resolution so that vendors in Linn County and not just those within the city limits of Cedar Rapids can benefit. The Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce has asked for such a modification as has the city of Marion and businesses in the metro area outside of Cedar Rapids.

“The nasty e-mails have slowed down,” said council member Chuck Swore, Procurement Committee chairman.

Judy Lehman, the city's purchasing manager, said Cedar Rapids vendors must complete a “local business certificate” before they can qualify to receive special “buy-local” consideration in certain kinds of city business. Bids dictated by state and federal rules do not apply to the program.

Lehman said about 240 local firms had filed the certificate, which she suggested was only a percentage of local firms that did business with the city in the recent past.

Council member Kris Gulick, a committee member, said the program was still too new to make any judgments about it.

In the three months of the program, about half of the applicable business has gone to local firms and half to non-local firms, which is about what the distribution had been before the resolution, Lehman and Casey Drew, the city's finance director, reported.