By Roger Baty
Turnagain Times Correspondent
The Girdwood road contract, which was awarded to HR Redmond for the past six years, was this year awarded to the McKenna Bros., asphalt and paving company based in Anchorage. The bidding process, however, has produced a hiccup, and the McKenna Bros. are now working under a temporary contract on a day-to-day basis.
The contract, which will cover snow removal in the winter, touching up pot holes in summer time, dust control, various summertime projects for resurfacing, culvert work, and cleaning ditches, went up for bid a month after the expiration of the old contract on Sept. 30.
Five contractors attended the pre-bid conference. There were only three contractors who actually made a bid for the road contract. The previous contract holder, HR Redmond, was not among them.
“They [HR Redmond] just called in,” said Girdwood Board of Supervisor Road Manager Jim Henderson. “We asked them if there was a question to extend. They said that if they were going to extend it, these were the rates that they wanted. We said, no.”
Principal owner, Bob Redmond, was unavailable for comment.
HR Redmond’s rate exceeded other’s bids by more than $100,000 coming in at a total of $376,685. The two front runners for the contract were McKenna Bros. and Western Construction & Equipment, another Anchorage based contractor. McKenna Bros. was chosen with a winning bid of $239,694 compared to Western Construction’s bid of $258,565. Last year’s bid by HR Redmond was $415,000. The company’s final bill for the contract year ending Oct. 1 was $332,112.
“Before we didn’t have competition, we had a monopoly,” said Henderson. “We reindexed our cost structure to reflect reality—what the contractors in the city are charging.”
But since the interim contract was awarded to the McKenna Bros, there has been a protest launched by John Light, the owner of Western Construction & Equipment.
The protest is a result of the McKenna Bros. failure to meet the specifications of the contract. An example of such a specification would be the contract calling for a grader that was made no later that 1990. The McKenna Bros. had a grader that was made in September of 1989.
“The contract called for a grader that was 1990 or newer,” Light said. “They produced one from 1989. Is there any mechanical difference between the 1989 and the 1990? No.”
“My gripe,” Light said, “is the municipality has to honor their own verbiage, and their verbiage says you can’t substitute your pieces from the point you have them inspected to the point you are awarded the contract.”
The McKenna Bros., however, do possess other graders and loaders that do not meet the specifications of the contract.
Light’s protest does not focus on his gaining the contract, but having each contract and contractor held to the same accountability and having specifications met at the time of the bid.
The specifications may seem trivial, but necessary for the quality of the job being done. The protest may seem undeserved, but necessary if the municipality is to maintain precedence in contract bids like this. As a result, the municipality has decided not to award the contract at the present time, keeping the McKenna Bros. on a temporary basis.
“They’re supposed to address the protest,” Henderson said. “It goes to a protest committee, which is a bunch of citizens, and they review it, and they make a recommendation on the validity of it.”
“The bid review board is for the interpretation of the language of the contract,” Light said. “They can cancel the contract and re-bid it.”
Mark McKenna, President of McKenna Bros., was unavailable for comment.
It is the hope of Henderson that the McKenna Bros. retain the contract.
“When somebody’s doing a good job, why change?” he said. “This is the middle of the race.”
At the Dec. 17 Girdwood Board of Supervisors Meeting, Assembly Member Jennifer Johnston addressed the road contract.
“It’s not your problem,” she told GBOS board members. “We have to let it go the course.”
Johnston said the precedence on record for contracts like these is something that must be looked at and held as authority.
Now in the middle of winter, it’s up to the city’s protest review board and the Anchorage Assembly to award a contract, so Girdwood can move forward and have a permanent road maintenance contractor in place, ready to operate during the most critical time of year.