Councillors here have directed staff to re-tender for the purchase of three pickup trucks, which they had earlier agreed to purchase from a Harriston dealership.
In February, Minto council elected to purchase three pickup trucks from Leslie Motors of Harriston, which submitted the low bids on two of the tenders. Council voted in favor of purchasing all three vehicles from the local dealership, rather than accepting a slightly lower tender (about $800) from Arthur Chrysler for the third vehicle.
At the time, discussion centered on the issue of buying locally.
“I think for $800 we should keep it here in town. If it was four or five thousand dollars between the three trucks I can see going outside … so my motion would be to purchase the three trucks from the local dealership,” councillor Rick Hembly said at the Feb. 19 meeting, where his motion to purchase all three trucks from Leslie Motors passed unopposed.
At the March 19 meeting, councillor Dave Turton presented a notice of intent to introduce a motion to reconsider the decision at the next meeting.
Earlier at the March 19 meeting, CAO Bill White provided council with a review of the town’s 2004 purchasing bylaw. In his report, White noted, “While tenders and request for quotations generally stipulate ‘the lowest or any tender not necessarily accepted,’” awarding a tender locally over an “otherwise compliant” lower bidder could be considered “a very restrictive practice.”
At the April 2 meeting, council passed a motion to reconsider the Feb. 19 motion “due to technical concerns with the specification and the review” in a public works staff report on the tenders received from three dealerships, and directed, “that the purchase of three new 2013 pickup trucks be re-tendered.”
The motion to re-tender passed with Mayor George Bridge, deputy mayor Terry Fisk and councillors Turton, Ron Elliott, Mary Lou Colwell and Ron Faulkner in favor, and Hembly opposed.
White said he would be reviewing the tender report prior to bringing it to council.
“We will prepare the tender. We’ll address the technical concerns. And the report will come back to you,” he explained.
“I think where we felt we needed to re-tender it is we felt we needed to get the specifics done properly,” commented Bridge.
Although the technical concerns were not outlined at the April 2 meeting, Bridge told the Advertiser the initial tenders from the town did not provide enough specifics on the vehicles required, such as whether they should have six-cylinder or eight-cylinder engines, to allow bidders to submit quotes on comparable vehicles.
“We have to learn to be better at the tendering process,” he stated.
Bridge said future tenders for vehicles could factor in the potential cost of having to take them out of town for servicing.
