City debates outsourcing landscaping maintenance
The Yuma City Council is debating whether to outsource landscaping maintenance, but a recent solicitation of bids left some council members confused, one noting that it wasn’t an “apples-toapples” comparison.
During a Dec. 19 work session, Robin Wilson, purchasing and contracts manager, presented the council with the bids submitted by private contractors for the landscape maintenance of various city buildings and properties. Currently the Parks and Recreation staff manages the maintenance of all city-owned properties, such as City Hall, police and fire stations and municipal court.
The bid items consisted of 22 locations throughout the city. Details of the service schedule and locations were provided to the landscaping contractors. The bid was first released as an “informal bid” on Oct. 4. A pre-bid meeting was held Oct. 10, but no
vendors attended.
Additional information was issued on Oct. 19, potentially pushing the bid over the $100,000 threshold, therefore prompting the “formal bid” process. This time two landscaping contractors attended the
rescheduled pre-bid meeting held Nov. 2. Six potential bidders downloaded the solicitation and four bid/ plan-rooms downloaded the solicitation to provide the bids to their paying clients.
There are 18 registered commercial landscape contractors located in Yuma, Wilson said.
For the bid opening on Nov. 16, the city received three bids, all in sealed envelopes. The city’s Parks and Rec also submitted a sealed bid for comparison.
Wilson noted that JSA Company of Yuma was the low bidder of annual costs for three properties: Tour West Building, 330 S. Main, $1,560; Public Safety Facility, 3575 S. Avenue 4E, $14,530; and City Prosecutors, 190 W. 14th St., $1,400. The total of $17,490 included equipment and labor but not the cost of materials. The additional cost for JSA Company to provide the materials would be $253.
The city’s comparison cost for the same three properties came to $23,529, excluding materials.
Councilman Jacob Miller asked if the city’s bid included overhead. Parks and Recs Assistant Director Damon Chango said it did not, because “no matter what, we’ll still have to incur that expense.” He explained the city would still have to send a supervisor to the sites to make sure work was being done. So he did not think it was right to include it in the city’s bid, he added.
But Miller protested, noting the contractors still had to include overhead when bidding. Therefore, he said, the bids were no longer an “apples to apples” comparison.
Mayor Doug Nicholls also said he was confused and asked about overhead expenses such as accounting and insurance.
Chango replied that all the “employee benefits and work gloves” were included in the city bid, and that the only overhead expense left out was the supervisor.
Miller said it still didn’t make sense to him. “I don’t see that it’s just an applesto-apples comparison when he took out the overhead and profit. There’s labor, lots of other things that are included in that. I just think to get a real apples-to-apples comparison, I wished to see everything included in that … I was hoping to see a different picture.”
Councilman Bill Craft, in his last work session, pointed out that the city is a nonprofit and the contractors are in it to make money.
“Immediately it’s no longer apples-to-apples,” he said. “To me the profit is the difference-maker. All things being equal we have one person with the same amount of gloves, eyeglasses, same fee, same cost, without the profit.”
Deputy Mayor Gary Knight noted, “To Miller’s apples-to-apples analogy, we can still put the overhead in there that he’s asking for and from what I’m seeing here, we’re still going to come out lower.”
Councilman Edward Thomas asked what would happen if a firm failed to complete the contract. Parks and Rec Director Debbie Wendt said that the city would issue several notifications, and if the company still didn’t live up to the contract requirements, the city could cancel it.
Thomas asked what would happen to the employees if the contract was canceled. In that case, Wendt said, the city would “absorb them back.”
Currently, the city has four full-time workers, a crew leader and a supervisor doing the work.