The owner and the account manager of a printing company that has been operating in Camden County for 66 years are accusing county officials of not supporting local business and wasting taxpayer dollars simply because those officials want to “do things like they’ve always been done.”
Gary Lorenz, chairman and owner of Lake Printing, located on U.S. Route 54 in Osage Beach, and Carol Whitfill, a customer consultant and account manager with Lake Printing, made the accusations after the county passed over their two low printing bids in favor of a company located in Springfield, Missouri.
“It was especially important for us to get that bid since our business is still down about 50 percent from what it was before the economic downturn in 2008,” Lorenz said.
Lorenz provided figures at the commissioners meeting to show Lake Printing had a vested interest in the county.
“In 2014, we paid $36,054 in sales tax, $8,232 of which went to Camden County. We employ 28 people, 14 of which live in Camden County, with an annual payroll of $1,188,798. Lake Printing’s employees that live in Camden County paid a combined $55,922 in personal property, real estate and Camden County sales tax. And it’s not like we’re not capable of doing the job. We’ve been in business for 66 years. we have a proven track record,” he said in a later interview.
Despite Lake Printing’s efforts, on August 19, Presiding Commissioner Greg Hasty and Commissioner Bev Thomas voted – at the recommendation of Assessor Kayla Henry – to award the bid in the amount of $14,477.40, which did not include postage, to the Edward J. Rice Company in Springfield rather than accepting the low bid of $12,992.30, which also did not include postage, from Lake Printing. Commissioner Cliff Luber, who read a prepared statement that the county should support local business, whenever possible, voted against the move. Whitfill and Kevin Speer, president of Lake Variable division were at the August 19 meeting when the vote was cast. Whitfill said that the recommendation to accept Rice’s bid was based “on their continued record of service over the last 20 years and that Lake Printing didn’t provide proof of database compatibility.” Whitfill said she and Speer had asked for their database several times in the months leading up to the assessor’s bidding process in order to prove database compatibility, but it was never provided. And although she, Speer and Lorenz had invited both the assessor and the collector to visit the facility to take a tour and see for themselves that Lake Printing had the technology and manpower to provide the same level of service, they never got an answer. Whitfill also said although she contacted the assessor’s office on two separate occasions to ask if there were any questions or concerns about the bid, she never received any feedback. Henry was not available for comment and did not return calls. Whitfill said she decided to seek the county’s business again when she bid on printing for Collector Vicky Burns’ office.
“The bid I submitted included copies of a newly designed tax bill and programming that we had done based on Camden County’s 2012 database,” Whitfill said, adding that when she turned the bid in at 9:30 a.m. on August 21, she also took copies of the bid and the programming samples to the commissioners’ office. Whitfill said when she dropped off the packet, she was told that the vote would be tabled until Vicky Burns had time to review the bids and make a decision. Instead, the commission voted that afternoon. At the recommendation of Burns, Hasty and Thomas again voted to accept Rice’s higher bid of $55,821.40, thus rejecting Lake Printing’s lower bid of $52,568. Luber was absent. Whitfill said she learned about the vote a few days later when she called Burns’ office to ask if they had any questions about Lake Printing’s bid.
In a later interview, Burns said she moved forward with the bid not only because they were they happy with the job Rice had been doing, but also because she was concerned about giving the job to Lake Printing without knowing if there would be “database compatibility.” She said although, at Lake Printing’s request, the county’s “IT guy” had sent files and information to Lake Printing so they could prepare samples to review in advance of the bidding process, those samples were never provided.
However, Whitfill, Lorenz, and Speer refuted that statement, saying that they had dropped off a “stack of samples” prior to bidding and also included samples in the bid.
Burns also said she wasn’t aware at the time that database samples were included in Lake Printing’s August 21 bid, but added that it wouldn’t have made a difference because she would have needed more time to review them to make sure they were correct. By statute, the tax bills have to be out 30 days before the end of the year.
“We know if there’s a mistake, it comes back on us. I’m not saying Lake Printing would make a mistake, but there’s a lot to the printing and mailing of statements,” Burns said, using the 2014 mailing as a case in point. She said because the assessor’s office was late in providing some of the tax information, Camden County was later than normal going to the printer. She said Rice’s employees worked the weekend to make sure the county met its deadline. “If we had gone with any other printing, I don’t know what would have happened. When you’re trying to follow state statutes and you don’t know what somebody can do – how they perform – as an elected official, I don’t feel like I can compromise the taxpayers and make a mistake and then have it come back on me.”
However, Whitfill said those concerns were addressed during the assessor’s bid-opening process.
“At the meeting they said they were concerned about the time sensitivity of the printing and mailing because so much of it is last-minute. I tried to explain that we deal with last-minute rushes all the time. We’re constantly working at the 11th hour to get things done for our clients. The owner even said he was willing to bring in the entire staff to make sure it was done on time. This is as important to us to get it right as it is to them,” Whitfill said. “The county has done simple variable data for the last 20 years. They’re acting like nobody else can do this. But we have equipment that does a much more complex version of what they’re doing. We’ve shown them that we do complex variable data for casinos. And in addition to handling printing for the state of Missouri and Missouri State University, we’ve also done work for Lake Regional Health System, Tan-Tar-A Resort, the Lodge of Four Seasons, Central Bank and First National Bank. We have a proven track record.”
Burns said also had problems with Lake Printing’s bid, which she said was lower, in part, because estimated postage was lower. She also said Lake Printing hadn’t included other requested information in their bid, “So I’m thinking, ‘Do they not offer that or are they just not charging for it?’”
However, a side-by-side comparison of the bids for tax statement printing and mailing for the collector’s office shows that the postage, estimated at $28,400, was the same on both bids. The bid form also shows that while Rice’s bid did include a breakdown of costs associated with address change processing, Lake Printing’s bid noted that there would be no charge for those services.
Hasty said he followed both the assessor’s and collector’s recommendations on awarding the bids because they’re the ones that have to run their offices.
“Believe me, we want to use local people, but there cannot be a mistake on this. It cannot fail. It has to be right and Rice has successful done this for us for many, many years in a row and it’s always flawless. I told (Lake Printing) in that meeting that if they could take the data and prove to us with 100-percent certainty that this is going to work and we won’t have an issue, then we wouldn’t have a problem with (giving them the bid),” Hasty said. “But if something took place with this mailing that was wrong – if something with the printing was wrong, the financial impact would be tremendous. It’s just one of those deals where the elected officials are so concerned about moving away from something they know works, to something that you have no guarantee that it’s going to work, it’s not worth that small amount of money.”
However, Lorenz said it wasn’t “a small amount of money. The cumulative loss to the county taxpayers over the last two and a half years is over $9,000, which, over time, adds up to quite a savings,” he said.
