article - The situation has been corrected and I don’t think it was specifically done to cheat taxes but can someone in city government explain the concept of selling city supplies to non-city entities. Forget any political aspects of this, I don’t care (yes the title was an attempt to draw in people who might know). I worked for a company that would sell supplies to a competitor in an emergency (at the going rate) but I’m wondering if this is done much on a municipal level. I would expect gas and road salt to be sold between government agencies on an emergency basis but I don’t see the benefit to a city selling gasoline to convention customers and then billing them back unless they can make a buck. If I were a gas station I would be a little miffed. So is this done much?
I don’t see the benefit of offering such once the convention location has already been determined, but offering conventioneers cheap gas seems like a clever little way to attract a convention in the first place.
So the city would get a bulk rate and then pass it on as a neutral cost savings as a package deal? That would make sense. I’ve just never heard of cities doing this but then I never heard of carpenter bees until they drilled holes in my garage project.
I got the impression that they didn’t do this much because the tax issue was new to them.