Bids discussed for animal shelter Posted On: Wednesday, Nov. 4 2009 04:59 AM By Mason W. Canales
Killeen Daily Herald

HARKER HEIGHTS – The City Council Tuesday discussed the contractor-proposed bids for the new animal shelter, but the city may still be weeks from picking a contractor for the project.

The city used a system of sealed proposals instead of the traditional method of sealed bids to choose the contractor for the animal shelter to be built on the corner of Clore Road and Indian Trail, Police Chief Mike Gentry said at the meeting.

This method allows for some more flexibility for the contractor and the architect and allows the city to factor in criteria other than price to choose the contractor, Gentry said. "The purchase price is the weight," of choosing the contractor though, he added.

In the sealed proposal system. the lowest-price bidder gets 30 points out of 100 points; then eight other categories are added together with various points for each to get a total score.

Using this system JL Construction received the highest score at 84.6 and Channey-Cox, which constructed the city's library and activities center, received the second-highest score at 75.8.

Mayor Ed Mullen questioned architect Michael Marrs' method of calculating the price difference during the meeting.

"By having one type of rank ordering compared to another, you could change the scoring of the price," Mullen said.

That scoring change could make a different contractor the highest scorer, Mullen added.

Marrs took the highest priced contractor and gave it a score of zero and the lowest priced contractor and gave them 30 points; the other six contractors were given scores based their proximity to the lowest score, he said.

If you are going to set the highest at zero points and the lowest at 30 points, then all the other contractors should be an equal distance between the next highest and lowest contractor and they are not, Mullen said.

The point system was very subjective, Mullen said, citing another category in the proposal bid system. "The wording is bad," he said, noting a relationship with the city could mean many things.

Because of confusion, the proposal bids will be discussed again.

The proposals will be brought back to the City Council at its next workshop Nov. 17, for more discussion by the City Council and a check of the point system, City Manager Steve Carpenter said. The city will then try to negotiate a contract and bring that contract back to the City Council for approval.

The City Council also discussed the following:

The city's sanitary sewer master plan.

An emergency standby generator for the Cedar Knob pump station at the Ridge.

Checking residential backflow systems on sprinkler systems once every five years.

Contact Mason W. Canales at mcanales@kdhnews.com (254) 501-7554.