by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Will the City have to allow competitive bids for construction work on its Bay Street Town Center?
Around City Hall it depends on whom you ask.
Several City Council members and the Council auditor said projects like the Bay Street improvements are usually bid to keep prices down. When the Council approved $1.4 million last week to widen sidewalks, install historical lighting and landscape downtown’s budding entertainment corridor, there was nothing in the legislation to suggest this project would be different, they said.
When the General Counsel’s Office gives its opinion today, both Council members Daniel Davis and Jerry Holland said they expect the City’s lawyers to rule that the City must accept bids. Davis read aloud from State statutes that require open bidding for public projects over $200,000.
Tony Zebouni, division chief of the General Counsel’s General Litigation Department, agreed that the City “tries to bid everything.” To do otherwise, he said, “tends to squish competition; we want competition to ensure the best use of the City’s money.”
Still, Zebouni spent the weekend examining the City’s plan to use a firm already under contract. The project is facing a pre-Super Bowl deadline, and Zebouni said bidding the project could cost the City time and money.
By skipping the bidding process, the City could save weeks on a project already facing a tight construction schedule. The City’s deputy director of Public Works, Ed Hall, said two weeks ago that the project must begin by late June to finish in time for the [Feb. 6], game.
Not wanting to expose Super Bowl tourists to ongoing construction, the mayor’s office has delayed construction on several projects until after the game. However, Mayor John Peyton has made completion of phase one of Bay Street, envisioned as downtown’s premier entertainment district, a priority. His chief of staff, Dan Kleman, told the Public Works Department that it was “not acceptable,” to delay the Bay Street project.
Waiting for bids could delay the project from two weeks to more than a month. Hall told a Council committee that a delay into July would be “near catastrophic” for the project. At the general meeting he sounded more optimistic. Bidding wouldn’t push the project past deadline, said Hall, but the timetable would force the City to pay for more labor and longer hours.
Zebouni said the City holds “continuous contracts” with several qualified construction firms. The firms have bid competitively for those contracts, agreeing to a set price for their services. Zebouni said the continuous-contract firms are used in special circumstances.
“For instance, if it’s an emergency, or a matter of public health, like the river is rising and something has to be done immediately. It can’t just be that it’s going to cost us more money,” said Zebouni.
Zebouni said the continuous contracts followed the spirit of state and local bidding requirements.
“Was the work competitively procured? In this case there was a competitive process to procure the provider. That’s the flavor of the intent of state statutes,” he said.
“You could look at this as: the work has been bid, it just hasn’t been specifically identified.”
If the City gets a favorable opinion from the general counsel and uses one of its continuous contractors on Bay Street, Council Auditor Richard Wallace said the City Council could force a closer examination of procurement rules. But Council member Jerry Holland said only a lawsuit from a private contractor would likely make the City reconsider. Zebouni agreed.