Trash hauling discussion had unusual truthfulness to it, unlike the usual routine with the building assessment consultant
From the NHRs Luther Turmelle:
The Town Council voted 8-0 Wednesday night to award a five-year, $5.53 million contract to Cheshire-based AJ Waste Systems to haul away the community’s trash and recyclables.
If you saw the meeting last night, you saw Councilmen Ecke and Altieri constantly repeat the point that this contract has an additional $80,000 in costs over the bid waiver option.
I appreciated hearing them say it. In other words, while I still believe this had to go to bid for obvious reasons... at least Ecke and Altieri were making a legitimate point as compared to their usual nonsense, such as their untruthfulness and misrepresentations when they discussed the building assessment consultant last night. Ecke sat there silently when I called him out on his failure to fulfill his August 2007 promise to seriously consider performance contracting:
And while Altieri spent August 2008 accusing me of failing to provide the information necessary for the Council to consider performance contracting... last night he said the Council had conducted its review of performance contracting in December 2007.
Huh? Which is it?
If the Council completed its review in December 2007, what more was needed in August 2008?
Oh... wait... I almost forgot this Council's motto:
Tim White
5 comments:
After several days to consider the angle sto the issue Tim, you have missed the political point.
Had the lowest bidder submitted a complete and proper bid on the trash hauling package, the Republicans would have been heroes. The point made by pursuing the bid process is that the process must be adhered to on a platform of general fair dealing in Cheshire, and in the interets of potentially saving tax dollars. You almost got 2 for 2.
The sad part is: if nothing whatsoever was wrong with that bid, something would have been wrong with the bid. And I think everyone knows what I'm talking about.
What is the price for a clean conscience?
Here's a novel idea: why not re-bid the project? The town has a history of this when things don't end up the way the good 'ol boys planned (take a look at Norton School). Maybe three times will be the charm again! Oh wait; the guy we wanted ended up with the job anyway. Now let's just beat up the guys who insisted we follow our Charter by using the bid process.
"and in the interets of potentially saving tax dollars. You almost got 2 for 2."
Almost is right. The waiver would have saved $80,000 to the same vendor but that would not be acceptable. Our charter has a known problem when it comes to bidding work. The requirement that the lowest qualified bidder gets the contract should be changed to something that allows the council to have some input based on company research, history, and quality.
The pool was awarded to the lowest bidder and now we are looking to rebuild the entire structure. Where is the savings in that plan? What was suppose to be self sufficient, costs us almost half a million per year.
The Norton School project went to the lowest bidder and they could not do the job. We had to hire another contractor to finish their work and now the second contractor is taking the blame. How much more did that job cost?
We are lucky that the word "qualified" is in the bid award. In this case, had the original low bidder won, we could be faced with a company that might go out of business during the contract. We would be stuck having to rebid the work and pay more.
Ray Squire had the best comment that I have heard concerning this bid: "Imagine if AJ had not bid" The next lowest (and only other) bidder was almost twice what AJ Waste had bid. Had AJ Waste decided after the council gave them the run-around not to bid, the town would have spent OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS MORE than the proposed waiver.
How well would our town leaders sleep at night then?
Since all of the town leaders are in bed with each other, how they sleep at night is an interesting and ironic question. RD, you got about 50% of your facts right. Keep up the good work.
Please correct me
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