# Pulaski County Purchasing Department The procurement office of [[Pulaski County]] government. Office address: **201 South Broadway, Suite 440, Little Rock, AR 72201**. Phone 501/340-8390. Fax 501/340-8352. The Purchasing Department is the office that issues RFPs and Quote Solicitations, processes the [[ARBid]] state-portal submissions, runs bid-evaluation processes (where the technical evaluation lives with the using agency), drafts award letters, negotiates contracts on the County's behalf, and routes contracts through the standard County approval chain. For the surveillance investigation, the Purchasing Department is the **contracting node** for Pulaski County's Flock procurement: it issued [[Pulaski County RFP-23-003 Solicitation and Flock Safety Bid|RFP-23-003]], ran the evaluation that selected Flock over Utility Associates / John Wright Associates / Insight LPR, drafted Judge Hyde's [[Pulaski County Flock Safety Term Contract Award (Contract 6764)|Award Letter]], and negotiated the [[Pulaski County Flock Safety MSA and Order Form (Contract 6764)|MSA red-line edits]] with Flock over October 2023. ## People - **[[Tashika Keown]]** — Lead Buyer, Pulaski County Purchasing Department. The named Buyer on RFP-23-003 (501-340-8311, `[email protected]`). Authored the June 29, 2023 Notice of Proposals Received memorandum to PCSO Chief Deputy Whitten; drafted the August 7, 2023 Award Letter; negotiated the October 2023 MSA red-line edits with Flock's [[Philip Nanni]]. - **Vitesh Patel** — Procurement Manager (named on the LRPD CLR-2026-778 corpus as the approver on the i2 sole-source exemption form; possibly the same Vitesh Patel or a county/city distinction; **not Pulaski County Purchasing** unless further anchored). ## Roles in this corpus - **Issues RFPs through the ARBid state portal.** Per [[Tashika Keown]]'s October 3, 2023 11:16 AM message: *"when a vendor submits a bid through ARBid, they agree to the terms and conditions set forth in the bid. If Flock Safety requires a signed contract, let me know and I will forward to legal for signature. Please be advised the agreement cannot supersede the terms and conditions listed in the bid."* The Purchasing Department's procurement-law theory is that the ARBid-submitted bid terms control over any subsequent vendor MSA — a posture the corpus has not documented at other Arkansas jurisdictions. - **Operates the bid-evaluation rubric.** The Department's standard scoring matrix weights Technical Capabilities 35%, Understanding of PC Needs 20%, References 5%, Local/Small/Disadvantaged Business 5%, plus a separate Cost of Service round at 100%. The technical evaluation is performed by panelists from the using agency (in RFP-23-003, 5 PCSO personnel); the Purchasing Department coordinates the process and produces the Supplier Scoring Summary. - **Negotiates vendor MSAs.** The Department's October 2023 red-line negotiation with Flock's [[Philip Nanni]] (across MSA pages 12, 19, 21-25, 28, 30) is the corpus's clearest documentary anchor for an Arkansas procurement-office's arms-length contracting posture toward a Flock standard agreement. - **Routes approved contracts through the Comptroller and County Attorney to the Judge.** Each contract carries the standard Pulaski County routing form with signature spaces for Grants Admin (when applicable), Purchasing, Comptroller/Admin, County Attorney, and final approval by [[Barry Hyde|Judge Hyde]]. ## Notes - The Department serves all Pulaski County departments (not just PCSO). The corpus contains Department-prepared contract files for PCSO procurements (Flock, SkyCop/Genetec) but also indirectly references County-wide work — e.g., the [[Pulaski County Regional Crisis Stabilization Unit MOU]] bundled into the Contract 6228 file is presumably routed through Purchasing for the County's participation in that multi-county MOU. - The Department's role in the County's procurement structure is **purely procedural**: it runs the procurement process to a recommendation, but the substantive selection authority lies with the using agency head (here PCSO Chief Deputy [[Earnest Whitten]] via the Notice of Proposals Received memorandum) and the final-contracting authority lies with [[Pulaski County Judge's Office|the County Judge]]. *Observation:* this structural separation between procurement-process administration and substantive selection / contract-authorization may explain why the Department took a more adversarial posture toward the Flock MSA than corpus-documented procurement offices at other Arkansas jurisdictions — the Department's job is to run a fair procurement and protect County interests in negotiation, while the political-decisional weight sits with the Judge. - The [[ARBid]] state-portal infrastructure underlies the Department's RFP process. The portal is the Arkansas state procurement system (`arbid.cgipdec.com` or similar); the Department uses it as a standard bid-receiving and vendor-management platform. - The Department's relationship with [[Pulaski County Grants Administration]] is structural — when grant funds are involved, the Grants Administration office signs the routing form before Purchasing. For non-grant-funded procurements (like the [[Pulaski County Flock Safety Term Contract Award (Contract 6764)|Flock award]]), the Grants Admin signature line is empty.