City to repeal vote to purchase vehicle from outside city and reopen bidding

 

[April 29, 2019] 

LINCOLN 

Because April is a five Monday month, there will be no meeting of the Lincoln City Council this week. The next meeting of the council will be on Monday, May 6th and it will be a voting meeting.

Among the items on the next agenda will be a vote to repeal a previous vote to purchase a new Ford pick-up truck for the city waste treatment plant from Landmark Ford in Springfield.

The motion to repeal is the result of discussions that took place at the Committee of the Whole meeting held on April 23rd. At that meeting Alderman Tracy Welch said that he wanted to recall the vote and re-bid the purchase of the truck. He said that he had no intention of throwing anyone “under the bus,” but the bidding process had not been done according to city policy, and he was very uncomfortable with the decision the council had made a week earlier.

The council had approved going out for bids for a new truck for the city’s sewer department, and at the committee of the whole meeting on April 9th they had heard the results of the bids. Bids had been placed for the new truck by Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, by Graue Chevrolet, and by Xamis Ford, all in Lincoln, and also by Landmark Ford in Springfield. Landmark Ford holds a state contract as a supplier of vehicles, and municipalities qualify for the same pricing as the state on vehicles.

At the initial bidding, Landmark came in considerably lower than the local dealerships. After examination of the bids at the April 9th COW, aldermen were advised that the bids had been for stripped down versions of the trucks. Added features and accessories had not been included in the bid. The city was told that with Landmark coming in the lowest, that dealership would now be contacted with a list of added features that were needed on the vehicle.

At that time, aldermen expressed concern that with having the extras added on after the fact, the local dealerships, specifically Xamis Ford did not have the opportunity to submit a bid that compared “apples to apples.” Waste Water Treatment manager Greg Pyles was asked to contact Xamis and give the dealership the opportunity to also bid on the extras. At that time, the aldermen also agreed to add a motion to award the bid at the next voting session, pending the information had been received from Xamis.

At the Monday, April 15th voting session it was reported that Xamis had been contacted. The dealership had submitted on price quote, but it was incomplete. They had been contacted a second time and submitted a second quote. That second quote was also not acceptable. The third request for a quote from Xamis went unanswered. With no viable quote from Xamis, the council moved forward with awarding the bid to Landmark Ford in Springfield.

At the meeting of the council on April 23rd, Welch said that the irregularities in the bid process were of great concern. He was no longer comfortable with the decision that had been made on the 15th and he wanted to revoke that approval and start over on the bidding process. He said that all the dealerships should have had the opportunity to bid the truck as it would be purchased with the list of accessories and extras included in the bid specifications.

Welch said he had also talked with Xamis Ford about not submitting the third bid. Xamis had indicated that they were working on submitting that third answer when time ran out. The dealership said it had not been fully aware of the deadline for the submission.

During the discussions on the 23rd aldermen talked about showing preference to local businesses. The city purchasing policy says that the city will show preference to a local business, even if its price is higher, but within two percent of the lowest bid.

Kevin Bateman, who will be seated as the Ward Three Alderman at the May 6th meeting, also spoke. Bateman is an employee of Landmark Ford in Springfield, but works in parts distribution. He told the aldermen that when the bid request came to Landmark he was not included in the bidding process. He added that when the request came to Landmark it was from Veolia, the city’s contractor for the waste water treatment plant, and it did not indicate that the truck was for the city of Lincoln. Therefore, he wanted to assure the council that his employment with the dealership had not influenced the bid.

Bateman further said that if and when this comes back to the city for a vote, if Landmark is still involved, he will excuse himself from the room and take no part in the discussion or the voting process.

Other issues with the bidding process came up as well. The requests for bid had been emailed to specific dealerships, and some questioned if that was proper. The group discussed how the city should go about seeking bids, and Steve Parrot said that he felt that emailing bid requests was showing favoritism to specific dealerships and not opening the bidding process up to anyone interested.

Police Chief Paul Adams said that when the city had sought bids for squad cars he had also contacted dealerships. However, he said what he did was ‘google’ vehicle dealerships within 50 miles of Lincoln and sent bid requests to all of them. The request for bids was also posted on the city website.

City Street Superintendent Walt Landers said he would volunteer to go through the city’s bidding process with the new wastewater treatment manager and answer any questions Pyles might have.

The group also discussed how to go about recalling the vote. This is an unusual situation to start with for the council, but it is more complicated because at the next meeting of the council there will be four new aldermen who had no part in the original discussions or the vote.

Michelle Bauer observed as a departing alderman that two of the four departing aldermen made the original motion and second. If the city needed to rescind that vote, did those two aldermen need to be present?

City Attorney John Hoblit said he had been researching that same question, and wasn’t finding much help. He said though that what he was concluding is that the city is not rescinding a motion and a second because the vote has already been taken.

He said that the proper language would be to make a motion to repeal the vote and reset the bidding process. The motion coming on the next agenda would be to repeal that vote, then the aldermen would direct the Wastewater Treatment Manager to start over seeking bids for the new vehicle.

The aldermen agreed that it would be fitting and proper to repeal the vote and start over on the bidding process. Welch added one final comment saying that in anticipation of the discussions just concluded, the purchase order for the new vehicle had not been issued, so no official purchase order or bid award has been given to Landmark.

As stated earlier, for the next meeting of the Lincoln City Council and the repeal of this vote, there will be four new aldermen. Departing aldermen include Michelle Bauer, Heidi Browne, Dayne Dalpoas and Ron Fleshman. New aldermen that will be sworn in at the beginning of the meeting will include Kevin Bateman (Ward 3), Sam Downs (Ward 2), Kathy Horn (Ward 4) and Kathryn Schmidt (Ward 2). Bateman, Horn, and Schmidt were elected into office on April 2nd. Sam Downs, who also ran for Ward Two Alderman against Schmidt, is being appointed to his seat by Mayor Seth Goodman.

[Nila Smith]