The Chattanooga City Council kicked off their strategic planning session with a long conversation about the topic of automatically renewing contracts. Often referred to by certain council members as “evergreen” contracts, these contracts would fly under the radar while also costing the city a sizable amount of money, it was noted.
“Are we missing opportunities to get better contracts because they have an evergreen clause and we’re just stuck with it,” asked Councilman Darrin Ledford. “I’ve gotten stuck with that in my business when I could’ve gotten a much better deal. And I magnify it on a city level and wonder if we’re getting into expenses that aren’t really necessary.”
“My understanding is that this body thinks a company has a contract that lasts forever and ever and ever,” said Councilman Anthony Byrd, who also stressed the importance of making sure those getting the contract were also protected. “What is the process that we can make sure these don’t last forever, and protects our constituents and the person getting the contract?”
City Attorney Phil Noblett detailed the different ways the city’s attorney’s office was attempting to mitigate these kinds of contracts. One of those methods was utilizing a “portal” of sorts to sort through various contracts.
“Our office is involved any time there is a request to review contracts,” said the city attorney on one thing the city is doing to be more mindful of these automatically renewing contracts, “and we actually have a portal for anyone who is requesting a contract to be reviewed. There are standard codes to go through. If we have it in the portal, we should be reviewing it soon.”
Because of how important this issue is for the council, Chairman Eskine Oglesby asked for this issue to be resolved as quickly as possible, saying, “This is something that needs to be prioritized, because this the third time this has circled around. We need to get some finality on this.”
The council will again discuss this issue in detail during the Feb. 18 meeting.