By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council had a discussion Tuesday on the bidding process for street projects as they looked at the 2021 Arterial Street Project. The low bid was from Pearson Construction, LLC at $1,139,088.90. Local contractor APAC-Kansas bid $1,149,249.03. Ultimately, City Attorney Paul Brown advised the council that they needed to take the low bid, because city policy says that is what they will do on street projects.
"If you go through this process and you don't follow your own policies, procedures and law and that company, Pearson, has gone to the time, trouble and expense of submitting a bid, that creates liability for the city and we could end up paying that cost. Now is not the time to abandon your policy and procedure and law. If you want to look at it in the future, great."
There appeared to be an appetite to look at it. Council member Jon Daveline in particular appeared to want to revisit the issue.
"I'm just still not comfortable with the exclusion of street construction projects, Daveline said. "I don't see how that affects the integrity of the bidding."
The idea is that if you favor local contractors too much, then non-locals won't even bid and then the locals won't have to give their best bid.
"These are actually historically lower than we've been getting lately," Brian Clennan with the city said. "It's about a dollar a square yard over the whole project. It's cheaper than we have been getting for bids on our street projects."
Councilmember Sara Bagwell said she believes that Pearson's presence has forced the overall bids lower. Mayor Steve Garza did say he'd like to see the policy looked at more closely and bidders to be informed of the possibility that local contractors could be allowed to match their bids if they are within a certain percentage, if the city chooses to change its policy to reflect that in the future.
CLICK HERE to download the HutchPost mobile app.
CLICK HERE to sign up for the daily HutchPost email news update.