CC - Minutes - City Council - 5/13/2014 (3)

Home

Prescott City Council Regular Voting Meeting May 13, 2014 Page 14 issues. He said there were issues not in the bid but the workers were just courteous and caring people. He said that you cannot put a price on service. Mike Fann, contractor, said he knows Park Avenue well, but he was not there to speak to Park Avenue, but to speak to public policy. He did not mind competing; he just wants a fair competition. He wanted a level playing field. He noted that for a number of years Prescott did not have provisions in their specifications for unbalanced bids. A few months ago, staff changed the rules. He said that staff said they were tired of unbalance bids and they changed the language in their bids. The language said that proposals would be considered irregular and may be rejected for material unbalanced bids, a bid that generates a reasonable doubt that award to the bidder submitting a mathematically unbalanced bid will result in the lowest ultimate cost to the City of Prescott, or a mathematically unbalanced bid, a bid containing lump sum or uni-prices that do not reflect reasonable anticipated actual costs, plus a reasonable proportionate share of the bidders anticipated profit, overhead and other incidental costs. He said that was good public policy. Mr. Fann noted that he read that courts have consistently stated that there is a strong public policy favoring competitive bidding as embodied in competitive bidding statutes. To enforce the public policy inherent in competitive bidding statues, a public agency is required to reject any bid that is non -responsive; for instance, a bid that varies material from the invitation for bids or provides the bidder an advantage not enjoyed by other bidders. He noted that the apparent low bidder for Park Avenue listed 7,000 hours for the flagger item and the rock removal item had 7,139 cubic yard listed. If just those two items are added, the total bid would be $56,713.00. The total bid from the second apparent low bidder was $482,811.00, a difference of $426,000.00 for those two items. He noted that unbalanced bids make it difficult to know who the really the low bidder is. Connor Moody, owner of CLM Earthmovers, talked about the bid. He noted that Mr. Fann charged $1.00/hour for flaggers on the Mt. Vernon job and CLM charged $8.00 per hour. He asked how that was different from his bid for Park Avenue. He noted that CLM had done $20 million worth of successful projects in four years with the City of Prescott. He does not believe that it is fair that the current job is being pulled from him. He said it should be awarded to the actual low bid from CLM Earthmovers, which would save the tax payers half of a million dollars on the project. Daniel Mattson, resident, said it is time for Park Avenue to get fixed. MAYOR PRO TEM LAMERSON MOVED TO TAKE THE STAFF'S RECOMMENDATION TO AWARD THE BID AND CONTRACT FOR THE PARK AVENUE IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT TO FANN CONTRACTING, INC., IN THE AMOUNT OF $6,457,035.50 (CITY CONTRACT NO. 2014-185); SECONDED BY COUNCILMAN BLAIR; PASSED 6-0.