Bid to move portables questioned by contractor

PALMER — The school district’s process for awarding bids has drawn fire from a contractor who’d hoped to be hired to move portable classrooms no longer needed in Talkeetna with this winter’s opening of Su Valley Jr./Sr. High School.

Patricia Sikes, with John’s General Contracting Inc., said that when her company lost the bid she was shocked to find that the winning bidder — Greenstreet Construction — was actually the highest bidder.

She said the contract was roughly a $100,000 job. Her company’s bid came in about at $97,290. The Greenstreet bid, she found out afterwards, was $101,650. Not a huge difference. But the lowest of five bids submitted was significantly lower than Greenstreet.

“He was $28,000 lower,” she said.

There are 18 portable classrooms on the Su Valley Senior Center’s property across the Parks Highway from where the previous school burned down and where the new school was built. Until this winter, they served as a temporary home for the school.

At Wednesday’s school board meeting — held at Su Valley to celebrate its opening — assistant superintendent John Weetman explained to the school board how the district decided on Greenstreet.

“This particular bid ended up being a best value bid and it wasn’t a low bidder piece. It became a best value bid because of the short timeline. The lease on the property that the portables are on ends at the end of this month,” Weetman said.

And if the district hasn’t moved its buildings by the time the lease is up, the borough would have to sign a rather expensive extended lease.

“There would be a cost of approximately $7,500 minimum that we know of,” Weetman said.

So, he said, the district wanted to make sure it had a reliable contractor who could get the job done in that short time frame. The district’s purchasing department put together a rubric with questions designed to weigh bidders against each other.

“One of the significant questions that is unique to this bid is past performance with the school district,” Weetman said. “That can weigh in favor of a person who has worked for us. It also can be to their detriment.”

For example: If a company had done work for the borough before but had missed its deadlines, that would count against the company.

Weetman said that of the five companies that bid on the project, three had their bids tossed out as being “non-responsive,” meaning they didn’t meet all the requirements of the bid.

Sikes pointed out that Greenstreet had the highest bid among the five. But now, with two bidders left, it was her company against Greenstreet.

Sikes said she bid the project and lost all 15 points in that category. Greenstreet, she said, won all those points, which put Greenstreet ahead.

But, she said, she wasn’t told how the bids would be scored before she submitted her bid. If bidders with experience working for the district are given such weight, she pointed out, how is a new company supposed to get its foot in the door?

At least one school board member seemed to sympathize with that point — Myrl Thompson, who coaches baseball when he’s not attending meetings.

“If I went by this I would never ever pitch a freshman and he could be a phenom,” Thompson said. “It just seems somewhat unfair.”

Sikes said she also doesn’t think that past experience with the school district really speaks to a company’s overall competence. She said she’s never gone over on price and never had her projects delayed past the deadline for completion.

And, she said, the district had the ability to get that information — she submitted references with her application. Indeed, she put phone numbers at the bottom of explanations of every project her company has done.

“They can contact every one of our customers,” Sikes said.

But, as far as she can tell, they didn’t until after she protested the bid. And then they only contacted one customer.

And one point she thought should be made — the district has the option to renew the contract for three years. The winning bidder would move buildings all over the district. And her base rate, she said, was $1,400 lower than Greenstreet’s. Multiplied by multiple building moves each year, that adds up quick.

Though the school board could have taken action on the bid Wednesday, the body declined. Board members didn’t discuss the matter, saying they wanted to wait until after they’d had time to consult legal counsel.

As for what she would like to have happen now, Sikes said she’d like, at the very least, for the district to re-bid the project. Whether John’s General Contracting wins, she said, is beside the point.

“It’s public money,” she said.

Her husband, Merle Sikes, is president of the company and backed her up. “They’re mis-spending public money.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.