Council Passes On Lowest Bidder

Officially it is more secret than Cadbury’s Caramilk Secret and Council is not revealing details as to why they failed to choose the lowest bidder when it comes to cement work to replace sidewalks, gutters and parapalegic ramps.

In a revote request Councillor Brian Swanson said not selecting the lowest bidder was doing the taxpayer a disservice while Mayor Fraser Tolmie said it was the right thing to do as the lowest bidder was not qualified to do the work.

Northstar Concrete won the tender for $449,680 including PST, which is 78% of the original bid amount of $543,880 plus GST.

“The lowest bidder at $375,000 was way less than we budgetted…$535,000 (to do the same amount of work) was more than we budgetted,” Councillor Swanson said.

“We will be able to do 78 percent of the work at $494,000 for what we will spend $55,000 more and get less work done when we could have got 125 percent of the work done,” he said. “To accept this motion is the taxpayers will pay more for less and they could pay less for more.”

Councillor Swanson stated the firm in question had worked for the City in the past and had always honoured their warranties sometimes past their expiration date..

Mayor Tolmie however said the lowest bidder did not qualify and the City's tendering process allows the City to award tenders to the lowest but also qualified bidder.

“They did not make the clean terms of the tender,” he said.

Any information as to why was confidential to a third party the Mayor said so he could not publicly state the reasons why.

Councillor Heather Eby said there were “extenuating circumstances” for declining the lowest bidder.

“I wish I could say more but I can't,” Councillor Eby said.

There was an indication the information about the lowest tender had come external from the City.

Councillor Swanson repeated his claim “the loser on this will be the taxpayers of Moose Jaw.”

Mayor Tolmie reiterated “it was based on the (lowest) qualified bidder which is stressed.”

The actual reasons why the lowest bidder were discussed in-camera (behind closed doors) at the May 11th Executive Committee meeting.

In a 4 - 3 vote with Mayor Tolmie plus Councillors Crystal Froese, Dawn Luhning and Eby opposing the motion to reconsider giving the contract to the lowest bidder was defeated.

The lowest bidder's name was not released.