There are rules for the specific way in which bids must be communicated to the city council. When a person or company that is attempting to submit a bid to the city does it wrong, that bid is then called “spoiled”.
It doesn’t happen very often, but while receiving bids for the position of Oakland Cemetery Caretaker, a spoiled bid was received. A hopeful contractor sent in a sealed envelope with his or her bid in it, but when addressing it had not done so in the manner in which the bidding instructions had specified, so the envelope looked merely like a personal or business message to the city administrator. Naturally, not having any of the necessary words of warning on the outside of the envelope, the city business office opened it. As evidence, The City Clerk gave to the council the improperly presented correspondence that did not indicate on the outside of it that it was a bid.
On motion from Councilperson Brian Muska, the Sac City council rejected that bid on the theory that anyone in the office could have looked at the bid and communicated that number to someone else who wanted the job so that they could turn in a lower bid.
The bids that were properly presented were:
Marjo’s for $22,675.00 per year.
Huster for $24,836.00 per year.
Menzter Construction and Landscaping for $23,987.00 per year.
All three companies did include proof of insurance.
After the bids were opened, City Administrator Adam Ledford suggested to the council that they had three options. The first was that they could turn the bids over to the Cemetery Committee to consider and allow them to make a recommendation. The second option was to award the contract immediately. The third option was to reject all bids and start the process over.
All of that said, the rules of the State of Iowa require that in the absence of any errors in the unspoiled bids, that the city is required to take the lowest bidder, so with a nod to Mr. Huster for the tremendous job that he did taking care of the cemetery during the previous year, Councilperson Jim Frederick moved to accept the low bid from Marjo’s.
It was approved unanimously.
Copyright (c)2007-2010 Curtis Bloes
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