Southbury Needs to Hire a Policy Writing Purchasing Consultant

First Selectman Edelson along with members of the Board of Selectman and Board of Finance are well aware of problems inherent in Southabury’s purchasing policy which allowed Mr. Edelson to award about $2 million in taxpayer dollars of one-bid or no-bid awards since first elected in 2011.

That several authors of our present loophole filled policy have been tapped for a reprise on a committee to review same is absurd: specifically, Edelson, Reilly, Sarosky, Crowe.

At the time this useless policy was crafted, Jon Norris and I researched and provided each member of both Boards with copies of the professional, well written policies of other towns, none of which would allow one- or no-bid awards.

Most other towns have dollar thresholds of from $3,000-5,000 which require a minimum of 3 written bids/quotations - some have thresholds as low as $1,000 while Southbury's big spenders enjoy an open ended policy which states:

"The policy allows the first selectman to approve expen­ditures for supplies, contract­ed services and equipment as long as they cost less than $10,000.

Quotes must be submitted in writing.

For expenditures between $10,001 and $20,000, the first selectman can make the award after a reasonable number of written quotes are obtained, and the details are reported to the Board of Se­lectmen."

No other town allows an open-ended ambiguous policy which allows the purchaser to determine what is a 'reasonable number of written quotes'   -- all requiring minimum 3 written quotations! It is this loophole which allowed one-bid or no-bid awards in the millions of dollars by Edelson.

Time to hire a purchasing professional to write a strong policy. Or, simply craft a new policy to mirror the well written policies of several other towns which we provided them.

Returning the same bad actors to rewrite this policy is plain stupid!

Carol Renza

Co-chair,  Concerned Taxpayers of Southbury