By Mark Rodeffer
I recently filed a FOIA with the City of Simpsonville (which was fulfilled in a very timely manner) to find out how much they are paying for business cards for employees. My company printed business cards for the City for a few years, I even developed card standards with the City from their branding guide and made an electronic template so new employees could fill in their own information.
I’ve known for some time the City is using a different vendor, but my FOIA revealed the City is now paying 2.78 times what my company charged for the same quantity of cards and similar quality from another printing business also within City limits. So, while I’m glad to see they are sticking to local vendors, I don’t really see any reasoning, other than politics, why they would pay almost 3x as much, especially when city lot owners will be hit with an approximately 4x increase in their public works fee next year.
I did contact our city administrator and she thanked me for bringing this to her attention and told me multiple bids for this kind of work would now be requested to make sure the city is getting the best pricing. Time will tell.♦
