Receipts is a weekly spotlight on how the city of Houston and Harris County spend your tax money, with a focus on the everyday things most residents may take for granted. Got something you want us to look at? Email José at jose@houstonlanding.org.
A few years ago, the City of Houston began testing the use of an Amazon Prime account to buy stuff.
Today, city employees are hooked.
From 2018 through mid-February of this year, the city spent $1.8 million on nearly 45,000 items. That’s a lot of fast and free shipping.
“It gives a lot more access and quick delivery at a lower rate,” Jedediah Greenfield, the city’s chief procurement officer, said recently. “The Business Prime contract that we negotiated has some really good discount pricing.”
This past January, City Council approved another $8.2 million in spending via the Amazon Business Prime account through mid-2027.
In addition to free shipping, the city has access to spending dashboards and the ability to create internal controls aimed at preventing violations of the city’s procurement policies, including spending limits on individual purchases and blocking certain categories of goods employees are not allowed to purchase.
The most the city has spent on a single Amazon transaction was in April 2020, shortly after the global COVID-19 pandemic was declared, when it ordered 400,000 disposable face masks for some $156,000. In fact, the top four transactions were for face masks.
The next highest-priced purchase was for colorful wristbands. The city’s former chief procurement officer purchased 888,000 of them for $15,229
Next was a September 2020 Public Works Department purchase of 500 copies of a book titled: “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.” That cost $8,145.
Many of the thousands of purchases involved office supplies, apparel and tech gear.
The biggest Amazon spender? The Houston Police Department at $420,188. Among its purchases:
- 350 pocket-sized booklets of “The Constitution of the United States”
- about 5,700 Mardi Gras bead necklaces for $1,196.40.
- six mannequins totaling $622.68.
- thousands of Nerf bullets for $669.
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