Commissioner grills officials on bid process

The wrangling over bids for county contracts continues to be an issue for county commissioners — and provided one of them with a ÒPerry MasonÓ moment during last weekÕs meeting.

Commissioner Steve Sisolak was grilling Clark County Water Reclamation District officials over the proposed purchase of two trucks for $658,586 from a California company.

SisolakÕs interest in the agenda item stemmed from the trucksÕ cost. But he and other commissioners are also very sensitive to local unemployment and are asking more questions about how and why contracts are being awarded to out-of-state businesses.

In this case, Sisolak also wanted to know how it was, in this economy with companies desperate for sales and work, that only one bid had been submitted.

And is this where the ÒPerry MasonÓ moment came in?

It is. District officials explained that another company had bid on the project but submitted its documents five minutes late.

Holding a document in his hand, Sisolak went on.

ÒIf this bid for $658,586 (the one the district wanted approved), if I told you that bid came late, would that surprise you?Ó

Richard Donahue, collection systems manager, said it would.

Then came the Ògotcha.Ó

Sisolak told him the time stamp said that bid was accepted at 10 seconds after 2 p.m. ÒNow IÕd like to know how that happens,Ó Sisolak added.

ÒSometimes we count late and other times we donÕt, and thatÕs really disturbing to me, Richard,Ó he said to Richard Mendes, the Water Reclamation District general manager. ÒIÕve gotten so many complaints about the way this is done ... I need to know whatÕs going on in the department.Ó

How did the Water Reclamation guys respond?

Donahue said that after the bid was received at 2 p.m., it was taken into a room and time-stamped. But two days after the meeting, Mendes sent a memo to commissioners that shed a different light on it. Mendes wrote that the bid was actually received via UPS the day before the deadline. The UPS envelope was time-stamped and placed in a safe. He included UPS tracking information showing that a package from Advanced Infrastructure, the bidding company, was received at 9:42 a.m. Sept. 23.

But, uh, the district canÕt find the date-stamped UPS envelope.

If it came a day earlier, why was the bid document stamped the next day, and 10 seconds late to boot?

Mendes said that was not standard procedure. He wrote that the form is Ònot usually date stamped,Ó adding, ÒNone of our staff knows why the copy in question was stamped. However, the fact that someone stamped it does not bear upon the issue of whether or not the bid was submitted in a timely manner.Ó

Is that the end of it then?

Hardly. Sisolak said that because of complaints he has received from Water Reclamation District employees and from companies that claim they are locked out of the process by narrow bid specifications, he questions whether the UPS delivery was even the bid document in question.

ÒWhat if it was some other thing the company sent? How do I know it was the bid?Ó he said.

He also wondered about the bid that was five minutes late and how much it was for. Because it was late, a district spokesman said it was never collected.

Were other commissioners concerned?

They were. Commissioner Larry Brown asked for a two-week delay on the matter because he said the districtÕs ways Ògo absolutely againstÓ how he has heard other departments do things. Commissioners approved that postponement.

Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani also asked for a staff evaluation of how various departments handle the receipt of bids. ÒWe need to be consistent,Ó she said.

Sisolak said county staff members are trying to put together a uniform process.

Joe Schoenmann can

be reached at 455-6175

or at joe.schoenmann