Spectrum

Nye Frontier Ford criticizes police car deal

I am compelled to correct the inaccuracies and bad information our community received after reading an article entitled Wasilla gets deal on new police cars published Tuesday, August 24, 1999.

The truth is the city of Wasilla actually paid more for those three cars by purchasing them through the municipality of Anchorage, than putting them out to bid and purchasing them locally.

There were only two correct statements in the entire article.

Nye Ford in Wasilla did in fact bid $21,959 per vehicle, and Chief Fannons habit of piggybacking is sort of a guessing game!

Nye Frontier Ford never submitted a bid for $28,000 for the Ford Crown Victorias, and never withdrew its original bid of $21,959. The bid was for 40 police Crown Victorias for the Municipality of Anchorage, and the Anchorage car dealer did bid $22,226 for each vehicle.

Nye Frontier Ford was actually the low bidder, but lost the business because the municipality gave its local merchants a bidder preference.

Consequently, the city of Wasilla paid more by piggybacking than by purchasing them locally from a business which employs over 130 people, who make their living in the Valley, a business which supports the city coffers with considerable monthly checks for sales tax, and will be asked to service these same vehicles when they need warranty repairs.

Nye Frontier Ford has supported this community since we opened in 1984. We selected our location within the city limits by choice.

Our employees are active and involved in our community, and have made countless contributions to local civic organizations, schools, churches, and various support groups over the last 15 years.

Most recently, ask the families who lost everything in the Big Lake fire, who benefited from the $20,000 donation to the Salvation Army, which hopefully made their life a little less devastating.

The perception that article cast is painfully offensive for every employee of Nye Frontier Ford, who work hard to provide a quality product, and quality service at a fair price.

There are enough negative impacts on our community and local businesses without our own city managers making these kinds of poor business decisions.

Habits picked up in small communities like Haines are no excuse for stepping over the businesses in our local business community.

Micah Weinstein is the general manager of Nye Frontier Ford.

EDITORS NOTE: The letter above is running for a second time due to an unfortunate error on the topic of the Wasilla police car bids. When the issue first came up in late August, the paper was given incorrect figures from the city for the bid submitted by Nye Ford. That error was set straight but, in an article last week about the citys accepting a low bid from an Anchorage firm, the error was repeated. To set things straight, at his request, we ran Mr. Weinsteins letter again in this issue as a Spectrum column so our readers would have the correct information. The Frontiersman regrets the errors.