Ringgold awards tractor bid, rejects high bids for pole barn repairs
The city of Ringgold recently awarded a bid for a new tractor and chose to pass on a bid for pole barn repairs that came in at double the estimated cost.
During the Nov. 25 City Council meeting, City Manager Dan Wright presented his bid recommendation for the new tractor, and also gave his reasoning behind wanting to reject all bids related to the pole barn repair project at the city’s Public Works shop.
“This (tractor) was put in the capital improvement plan (CIP) as you’re well aware. This is the lowest bid that meets the specifications and it’s Nelson Tractor Company,” Wright said. “It’s a Kubota tractor in the amount of $29,175 and it was budgeted.”
The three-person quorum comprised of Randall Franks, Sara Clark and Kelly Bomar unanimously approved the purchase, with councilm member Larry Black absent and Mayor Pro Tem Terry Crawford filling in, with Mayor Nick Millwood also absent.
The tractor is a Kubota L4701 HST model.
As for the pole barn bids, Wright explained that the one bid received was much higher than the city anticipated.
“Riley Contracting was the only one, who submitted a bid of $39,000,” Wright explained. “I’m going to request that we reject all bids. If you’ll remember, when I first brought this up, we had an estimate of $17,000 to $18,000 by a local contractor and we had another one that wasn’t too much higher than that particular bid. We don’t know who this person (bidder) is. They must have picked it up from the Georgia Registry.”
Wright suggested re-engaging with local contractors on potential quotes rather than going the sealed bid route, which is where the high bid came from.
“The bid is well over double what we were anticipating and when you look at our policy, $10,000 was the threshold that we used to have in order to require sealed bids,” Wright said. “To get a roof repaired and to have to go to sealed bids and do all the things that you have to do — I’m going to be very frank with you — a lot of those guys aren’t going to fill out the paperwork and do the things that they need to do because it’s just too much trouble for them.”
After the high bid came in, Wright says he checked with the city attorney about bypassing the sealed bidding process.
“We checked with the city attorney and until something hits $100,000 you don’t have to do that sealed bid process like we have been making ourselves do,” Wright explained. “In this case, I would like a little bit of flexibility so that we can bring back some quotes from two or three local roofing companies that know what they’re doing and that stand by their work. I think we can get that price down.”
The board unanimously approved the bid rejection and will now touch base with local contractors to hopefully garner standard quotes more in line with the initial $17,000-$18,000 estimates.