Item 7.1 on the March 3, 2015 city council agenda indicates the sad state of affairs at our engineering and purchasing departments.
The city went out to bid for the Zoo’s African Wild Dog Exhibit. Three firms responded with bids.
Now the city wants to reject all of the bids and start over. This language is part of the agenda backup material:
Recommend rejection of all bids. Upon further review of all components of the bids submitted various factors were identified: the Competitive Sealed Proposal Process was not the most effective bidding mechanism for selecting a qualified contractor for this project, references in the technical specifications with regards to the requested qualifications could have been better identified, and the past performance evaluation does not clearly represent projects associated with the requested technical qualifications. The project will be re-bid as lowest, responsible bidder highlighting the required experience
In other words, we want someone else. The city clearly has the right to reject all bids and start over.
In this case they did a poor job defining the experience that they were requiring and ended up wasting the time and money of three local businesses.
Let’s see how this situation supports the achievement of some of the city’s stated goals:
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
So Engineering screws up again. What else is new? Just look at Country Club Road and San Jacinto and ask yourself how hard it can be? Too hard for these ka-kas.
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One wonders – yet again – how much input the officials at the actual zoo may have had in connection with this project. Also, was any effort made to communicate with zoo officials in other cities that might already have such a African Wild Dog Exhibit? It is a real stretch to try to see just how Council is trying to see to it that this project benefits their “friends.”
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