City to rebid water project

After throwing out all requests for proposal bids - including the winning Robinson & Owen bid - on April 4, the city council has voted to rebid the $250,000 project in a competitive "low bid wins" format.

The original competition for the project was settled earlier in March with contractor Robinson & Owen selected on a point system as the winning contractor.

The bid award was appealed by the number-three bidder, Bartels Construction of Powell Butte, who had submitted the lowest price bid.

Based on the appeal, and acting on the advice of attorney Steve Bryant, the city council contract review board threw out all the bids.

At the time, Byant indicated that the city's request for proposal (RFP) ordinance needed some small "tweaks" to clarify the language, and a checklist that would include a requirement that the city's point system was approved by council vote to assure that the language "will not create favoritism," and that using the weighted criteria "is a financial benefit to the City of Sisters."

This vote will need to be taken for each RFP project.

At Thursday's council meeting, Bryant indicated that the RFP ordinance needed substantially more time and work than anticipated. At that point, Public Works Director Paul Bertagna requested and received approval from the council to put the Hood Avenue/Fir Street water line project out as a request for bid (RFB), which allows the project to be awarded to the lowest-cost bidder.

The delay in awarding the contract and beginning construction has pushed the completion of the project into the tourist season.

The biggest immediate concern is having construction on Cascade Avenue during the Sisters Rodeo parade. Overall, the concern has been to minimize the disruption of Hood and Cascade Avenue merchants, hence RFP language that awarded extra points for a well-thought-out real-time communication plan between the affected merchants and the contractor.

Bertagna will be including language in the RFB that will include a requirement for night work only (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.). The bid specification will also include a requirement to begin the project with the Cascade Avenue portion, and the assurance that Cascade Avenue will be fully operational for the rodeo parade.

New RFB specifications for the Hood Avenue project will be issued by Bertagna as soon as possible.

In a parallel effort, the council will rework the wording of the RFP ordinance in their April 18, 8 a.m. public workshop. The point-system RFP process has been used by the city twice before, but in each case the contractor with the highest point total was also the lowest bidder, so the RFP approach did not come under question.

Each of the councilors expressed their varying degrees of displeasure with the results of this particular bid. Beyond the obvious risks of delaying the construction into the busy season, they each expressed their concern for the plight of the contractors that now had to rebid with their competition knowing the full details of their earlier bids.

Bertagna noted, "We need to get dirt moving by the beginning of May. We also need to make sure that we have the Cascade Avenue part done by permit time, which is June 30, 2013. There will also have to be a variance to the noise ordinance (signed by the city manager) to allow the after-hours construction work."