Piggybacking: A Smart Procurement Strategy for Sunny Isles Beach

Published on April 01, 2025

By Commissioner Jeniffer Viscarra 

If you watch our Commission meetings, you may have heard the term “piggybacking.” Piggybacking allows Sunny Isles Beach to use another government agency’s contract for a product or service, “borrowing” the same terms without repeating the lengthy bidding process.

This practice benefits small cities like ours, allowing us to secure reduced prices on volume purchases made by another entity. For example, if after going out to bid, the state purchases 300 trucks from a vendor and gets a better price per vehicle for buying in bulk, our city can obtain the same price when purchasing two of the same vehicles.

Piggybacking is not done out of a desire to do business with a particular “handpicked” vendor. Our staff evaluates the terms already obtained by other agencies and gets the same beneficial terms for our city. The vendors are vetted through the bidding process of the government entity that entered the contract.

Furthermore, piggybacking does not mean that the city blindly accepts another agency’s bidding process. Staff checks and rejects what doesn’t meet our purchasing requirements. Staff verifies that the contract is active and confirms that the vendor is in good standing.

Piggybacking is used on a case-by-case basis, providing an alternative starting point that allows for a more efficient use of staff time and more affordable results. However, it does have its limits. If a project has unique requirements to Sunny Isles Beach, like the creation of the Intracoastal Sports Park, then we go out to bid. This procurement method is incorporated in the City’s Purchasing Code of Ordinances, Chapter §62-13.

Like one of my colleagues seems to have done in last month's Islander, one could argue that piggybacking is a “continuous waiving of the open and transparent bidding process when awarding million-dollars contracts to handpicked vendors.” While my colleagues may prefer other practices, it does not mean piggybacking is an act of corruption as the statement above infers. On the contrary, it prevents wasteful use of resources and provides a perfectly acceptable, beneficial, and widely used alternative.