STAPLES - Although you may have never heard of it, the National Joint Powers Alliance has its hand in public and private operations across the country.
The public agency's mission: helping more than 50,000 governments, schools, agencies and nonprofits in the U.S. and Canada to become as efficient as possible.
Originally created by the Minnesota Legislature in the mid-1970s, the NJPA is one of nine service cooperatives formed in the state of Minnesota, formerly known as the North Central Service Cooperative. The NJPA broke ground in July on construction for a new two-story facility, in which they plan to eventually house 150 employees after 10 years of growth. International contracts are handled out of the Staples office, but the focus is on five counties making up Region 5: Crow Wing, Cass, Morrison, Todd, and Wadena.
Chad Coauette, CEO, said the NJPA has particularly expanded over the last five years in the area of "cooperative purchasing."
How does it work?
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When a local government wants to buy something - say, a new squad car for a city's police department - it advertises for bids, where sellers compete to offer the lowest-priced squad car that still satisfies what the city wants. It's a bit like a reverse auction, where the lowest bidder is usually selected by the city as the winner.
The process is designed so taxpayer dollars don't go toward paying for things or people the city doesn't need, or that the city council members would benefit personally from if the city paid for them.
Although it's a great deal more open and accountable than the way private companies buy things, the bid process can sometimes bog down a local government with red tape.
That's where the NJPA comes in. When they solicit and award a cooperative purchase contract, cities don't have to go through the bid process every time they buy a squad car.
The NJPA undertakes a rigorous proposal evaluation process so the cities and counties don't have to.
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National Joint Powers Alliance
- Location: Staples
- Number of employees: 90
- By the numbers: The NJPA gave $1.4 million in Innovation Funding to projects across Cass, Crow Wing, Morrison, Todd and Wadena counties for fiscal year 2015-2016.
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"I like to know I can sleep at night knowing our process is so solid," Coauette said.
Its main market for cooperative purchasing is public and private educational institutions, Coauette said - they help school districts save on everything from copiers to school buses, staples to field turf.
The NJPA collects a 1 percent fee for its own operations. Revenue from the fee allows the NJPA to directly fund public projects through its Innovation Program.
Fees from New York and Florida come back to help improve towns in north central Minnesota. "That scope and scale of business has helped us to do even more great work locally," Coauette said.
Nearly $2.5 million total has been awarded to projects in the five-county Region 5 area since the program started in 2014, he said.
In July, the NJPA announced it had greenlit projects that included $54,300 to the Mississippi Headwaters Board for an anti-aquatic invasive species infomercial campaign, designed to raise awareness of aquatic invasive species in ad markets in Minneapolis, Fargo, Duluth and Sioux Falls; $76,250 was awarded to the city of Pierz to buy 25 radar road signs that tell motorists how fast they're going - signs that cities all over the region can use themselves to help prevent crashes; and $81,383 went to pay for a drug task force agent to stay on the force another year in Wadena County.
The NJPA is technically a school district, and one of its core missions back at home is helping students succeed. It helps with training and consultant work to help improve school operations, Coauette said.
In keeping with the NJPA's roots, a large chunk of Innovation funding went to schools, including $250,000 to Minnesota State Community and Technical College and Central Lakes College for STEM mobile trailers, designed to get area students excited about careers that use science and math; and $294,000 went to fund career advisers in schools across the Region 5 area. Thousands more in funding went to other projects.
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As if that weren't enough, the NJPA also supplies planning and zoning consultants that cities and counties can hire to help figure out the best way for their community to build new buildings and develop.
One recent hire by the NJPA now helps eight different cities and townships, for example. The NPJA also intentionally overstaffed its information technology department so it, too, can be contracted out to help governments.
The NJPA's work across North America fuels its commitment to help northern Minnesota be safer, better equipped and more thoroughly educated.
ZACH KAYSER may be reached at 218-855-5860 or Zach.Kayser@brainerddispatch.com . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ZWKayser .
