One of the best ways to maximize taxpayers’ investment in public construction projects is to accept the lowest qualified bid. Fortunately, strict laws protect that process.
Unfortunately, two technicalities can keep the lowest bidder from getting the job, and that’s what happened earlier this week. Clark County commissioners accepted the third-lowest bid among those presented at an official bid-opening meeting. As a result, taxpayers will pay about $118,000 more for a portion of work on the large Salmon Creek-Interstate 5 interchange project.
The first technicality was the failure of Battle Ground’s Tapani Underground to include a signature page with its bid. For this, Tapani officials have taken full responsibility and, according to Stephanie Rice’s story in Wednesday’s Columbian, the company has reprimanded employees who were involved in the bid process. The second technicality — the wrong unit price for bark dust — led to the disqualification of Goodfellow Bros. Inc., which has an office in Portland. Thus, the $11.6 million bid by Rotschy Inc. of Yacolt was accepted, even though it was $118,000 higher than Tapani’s bid.
Obviously, this whole process is tightly regulated, but let’s go back to the most important stakeholder, the one presented in this editorial’s first sentence: the taxpayers. Is this really the best government can do for taxpayers? Spend $118,000 of their money that really doesn’t have to be spent? To allow technicalities to disqualify lower bids that in all other ways were acceptable?