To kick things off, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings discussed how the county relies on local businesses to boost the county’s economy and provided a general overview of the county’s FY 2024-2025 budget.
For example, Demings said, “Just yesterday, we had the tentative vote by the Board of County Commission for the upcoming fiscal year budget of 2024-2025, which will start Oct. 1. That budget for Orange County is about $6.9 billion. As a result of that, we want to make certain that our various businesses and contractors are aware of the needs that we have.”
The mayor also discussed the impact of the county’s recent population growth.
“Within the next few years, we will surpass Hillsborough County and be the fourth-largest county by population. Our population now is approximately 1.5 million residents, and it is growing. The last estimate provided to us by the state is that our county has grown by a net of about 400 new people moving in each week.”
As for doing business with the county, Chief Procurement Officer Carrie Mathes discussed the following do’s and don’ts for vendors and contractors:
- Bookmark OCFL.net. Once there, Mathes said to click on the business tab at the top of the website, followed by vendor services in the drop-down menu, to access all information about becoming an Orange County vendor; this should be the first step for all businesses interested in working with the county.
- Meet with Orange County’s procurement team. “The procurement team meets monthly from January through July, and we accommodate that at our offices downtown. You can register to attend one of those opportunities. It is facilitated by our buying section and procurement. We invite you in. We share a little bit of information about navigating the procurement process, and we want to hear about what products or services you have to offer the county. Our team will make some points of contact.”
- Bid and proposal openings. “All of the county’s formal solicitations are opened in a public meeting, and that’s a requirement of law. They’re available for you to attend in person. They’re also available for you to attend virtually, but if you’re interested in following a project that perhaps has already opened, if you click on this particular link, it will take you to an area where we house the last two months’ worth of bid openings. It shares information regarding what the solicitation was for, who competed, who submitted bids for that particular procurement, and what their bid totals were.”
- Award recommendations are posted in advance. “For anyone submitting information to be considered for a formal solicitation, we post all of our recommendations for awards on the website in advance. Those recommendations are posted for five full business days, and that is per our county ordinance.”
- Keep an eye out for future capital projects. “This is a new portion of the website we added last year called 'Proposed Future Projects.' We heard a lot from our contracting community that they wanted to be informed of future capital projects and when they might be able to project seeing some of those solicitations out on the street as an opportunity to compete for that work, and so we built this particular area of a broadcast so that you can see all of the list of the capital projects that have been funded for this fiscal year.”
In total, Mathes said, the county manages approximately 950 term contracts annually.
More information about Orange County’s Contracting Academy and vendor services can be found online.
