elpasospeak

I agreed with almost everything in this post the other day on Refuse the Juice.

A bidder on a construction project evidently did not quote a number on a line item.  On a bid this  should disqualify the bidder.

According to the post, city staff recommended awarding the bid to the bidder anyway.  The bidder with the lowest complete bid filed a protest.  The item was pulled from the city council agenda.

Do over

Now it seems that the city is going to start over and rebid the project.  Of course the new bids will be made after looking to see what everyone bid before.

This is unfair.  I know many El Paso businesses that do not even bother to bid for city business because of things like this.

Where we part

The post went on to say:

None of this crap was going on with construction bids until Mayor Leeser took office.

I cannot agree.  This kind of thing has been going on for a long time.

I don’t know whether the Mayor got involved with this bid or not.

I do know that the purchasing function at the city often is unfair.

We deserve better

Brutus

It seems that the construction contract to once again rebuild San Jacinto plaza is going to be back on the city council agenda this Tuesday.

A closer look at the plaza deal explained the situation at the time.

City staff pulled the bid award off the agenda at the last minute.

Now it appears that the item is back on the agenda for approval.

Something is going on here and watching council’s actions will tell us a lot.

I still wonder why 30 bidders picked up the bid package and only 3 responded.

We deserve better

Brutus

The January 14, 2014 city council agenda has several purchasing department items on it, including some more activity from buy boards.

Agenda item 6.1 proposes the purchase of 7,000 of those recycling and refuse containers that we use in El Paso.  The backup material proposes that the purchase be made through the Houston based buy board that the city likes to use.  The backup material states “The city has made the determination that purchasing from this cooperative offers the most  cost-effective pricing”.

The price will be $51.39 for each of the 96 gallon containers.  Shipping will be another $13,800, bringing the total purchase to $373,580.

Bidding must be expensive

If I am correct the supplier must pay 4% of the purchase price to the buy board as part of their administrative fee.  That comes to over $14,000.  How much would it cost the city to issue and conduct a bid for this item?  Would it cost $14,000?  Would the vendor lower the price by 4% since the buy board would not participate?

Might some other vendor come in with an even lower bid price?

Remember that the 4% benefits school districts in Houston.   Isn’t that nice of us?

Not being an expert

Purchasing must be complicated so I need to be careful here to not make it look too simple.  I decided to try to figure out what other cities pay for their garbage cans, so I entered “96 gallon bid” into my search engine.

Within a second or two I got 26,3000 results.  The third item down gave me the results of actual bidding.

As it turns out, the city of Bay City, Michigan wanted 1,000 units in September of 2013.  The low bid was $47 each versus the $51.39 our city wants to pay.

We deserve better

Brutus

I saw something good when watching part of the city council video for the January 2, 2014 meeting.

Governance

I saw the mayor and a couple of city representatives asking intelligent questions about agenda items.  Item 5.1 on the regular agenda related to a potential $4.2 million construction contract for “on call” services.  In essence city staff wanted the approval to spend the money for miscellaneous concrete work or as the backup material contained:

Install and/or construct various types of infrastructure improvements not otherwise addressed

A city representative asked what projects the contract was going to be used on.  City staff indicated that the contract would be used as things came up.  The mayor joined in and asked how staff could ask for $4.2 million and there not be a list of specific projects.  The item was postponed until city council could be briefed.

Typical

Staff felt that in a normal year a certain amount of unscheduled work needs to be done.

It was remarkable to me that staff was not able to articulate the facts.  It seemed to me that staff was taken by surprise that their judgment would be questioned.

The concept probably would make sense if there was a low dollar limit on each item authorized under the contract.  We have unfortunately seen in the past that staff will sell a contract like this as being only for small projects and then turn around and use the money for one or two larger projects without having to get competitive bids.

Fairness

A different agenda item concerned a citizen asking for reimbursement for taxes that were paid twice.  Staff requested that the request be denied.  City representatives questioned staff about the completeness and fairness of the process.

Rubber stamp

In the past we have seen city council fail to exercise governance when dealing with city staff.

In this meeting we saw council ask intelligent questions and provide direction that was contrary to what staff wanted.

I hope that council continues to do this.

We deserve better

Brutus