SOUTHWICK — While a proposal to have town departments create a purchase order for any expenditure, no matter how small, wasn’t decided on by the Select Board at its meeting on July 6, Select Board member Joseph Deedy may have unwittingly streamlined the purchasing policy.
“I think that this discussion is really good in that it helped identify this problem at its core,” said Select Board Chair Douglas Moglin during a nearly 10-minute deep dive at the end of the discussion into the purchase order policy and ways to make it more efficient.
At the board’s June 22 meeting, Deedy proposed to have all town departments revert to a purchase-order policy that had been abandoned over a year ago to make operations more efficient and to reduce the workload for department heads and the Accounting Department.
“I think we need to bring them back,” Deedy said at that meeting.
His proposal was immediately challenged by Select Board member Russ Anderson.
“It slows down the system terribly … there’s no added value to it,” Anderson said to Deedy.
Before the town’s chief administrative officer, Nicole Parker, changed the policy, department heads who wanted to buy anything for operations costing between $1 and $10,000 had to fill out a purchase order and submit it to the Accounting Department either by hand or by email.
The Accounting Department would check to ensure there were sufficient funds in the department’s budget for the purchase. The purchase order would be submitted to Parker for approval. Parker would sign it, return it to the department head, and the department would make the purchase.
As the discussion on Deedy’s proposal wound down, Moglin deferred a decision, saying, “I want to talk to some folks about it.”
Anderson didn’t talk to the department heads, but he surveyed them, which appeared to irritate Deedy.
“When did we decide to do a survey?” Deedy said to Anderson.
Answering Deedy, Anderson said, “Who’s we?”
“You did the survey?” Deedy asked.
“Yes,” Anderson said.
“Nobody knew about it, or everybody knew about it?” Deedy asked.
Anderson said Parker did.
“I vetted it through her first, and when we had our meeting, you said, ‘Well, I got to talk to a few people …’” Anderson was saying until he was cut off by Deedy.
“Can you let me finish?” Anderson said.
Deedy continued, “I just didn’t know who authorized [it]. That’s all I’m asking. All I’m saying is [you] took it upon yourself to…”
Anderson finished, “I took it upon myself to have a neutral thing done with everybody, not a select few.”
At that, Deedy picked up a copy of the survey, held it up, and said, “Your questions,” before tossing it onto the conference table.
Before the exchange with Deedy, Anderson gave a brief explanation of the survey and results.
“I tried to get a pulse of what folks, department heads, were thinking when it came to the purchase orders … it’s pretty clear that 70% of the department heads really are negative or very negative of moving forward or going backwards to processing purchase orders,” Anderson said.
The survey consisted of four questions, two of which specifically asked the department heads: “Please share your thoughts on returning to purchase orders for all department expenditures,” and “Was the past purchase order process convenient?”
On the convenience question, nearly 60% of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that the past purchase order process was convenient.
When asked about returning to the old policy, more than 70% of respondents gave negative or very negative responses.
Anderson guessed that before the policy change, there were 3,000 to 5,000 invoices a year.
“You start putting $25 or $35 an hour to those hours [spent getting a purchase order] you’re looking at over $100,000 we’re wasting for just touching a piece of paper for a purchase order,” Anderson said.
Anderson and Deedy were largely silent while Moglin provided his perspective.
His main point was that the town’s department heads need access to the town’s MUNIS system, which integrates core administrative operations like fund accounting, human resources, payroll and purchasing into a centralized database to eliminate data silos.
“I think we need to present to the department heads access to MUNIS such that they can see those numbers in real time and also be able to put in a PO request even beyond the limit that we have right now (the current minimum is $3,000) so that they don’t have to have four different colors of paper and triple carbon and drive it over to there to get it approved,” Moglin said.
Allowing department heads access to the MUNIS system “would pretty much solve all of this,” he said.
At the June 22 meeting, Parker said she was working on getting the department heads access to the system.
Anderson and Deedy generally agreed, with Deedy adding that if the department heads had access to MUNIS, “they could probably write [purchase orders] for everything.”
In other board business, during a joint meeting of the board and the Planning Board, Giovanni Allsop, who has been serving as an associate member of the board, was appointed as a full board member until next May’s municipal election. Diana Juzba, who was elected to the board in 2025, resigned her seat.
The Select Board also reappointed the members of the Fire and Police departments.
While the majority of those serving on boards and committees have indicated they would like to stay, one full member seat and two associate member seats on the Finance Committee are vacant. Those members are appointed by Town Moderator Celeste St. Jacques.
