City council will be considering an item next Tuesday that shows how wrong-headed city staff can be.
It seems that the parents of a blogger (refusethejuice.typepad.com) own a construction firm that submitted a bid for a city construction project. They submitted the low bid.
Someone thinks that they should be disqualified because one of their line items came in above an amount specifically allowed by the bid request. The have been deemed non-responsive “for failure to comply with the requirement of Base Bid IV that the mobilization costs not exceed 5%”.
Huh? A bid should ask you for your price, not tell you how much you can charge. Their bid came in with the low price. The fact that one line item came in at 5.05% of the total when the specifications said it could only come in at 5% does not change the fact that when you add up all of the items in the bid, they were low.
Where do these guys come up with requirements like these?
Could it be that the blogger is frequently critical of the people over at the city? Or is it that by their wrong-headed rules they must disqualify the bid but want to reward the blogger’s recent support of city hall activities?
The blogger and his family are not the important issue here.
Trying to control how the free market bids is the issue.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
What free market? The so-called free market is an illusion.
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“….Frequently critical of the people over at the city?” Huh, for quite some time, all he’s been doing is kissing most of their arses, because getting even deeper in debt is considered “progress.”
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