Sparta Loosening Sealed Bidding Requirements

With prices continuing to rise, Sparta will change the city’s bidding process.

City Administrator Tonya Tindle said the city is raising the minimum project cost that requires sealed bids from $10,000 to $25,000. Tindle said it will make things easier for the city as inflation been forcing them to go through a lengthy bidding process for more and more projects.

“This will just allow us to not actually have to come in and get authority to take bids and then do the whole bid process by doing all the advertisement and everything,” Tindle said. “We can actually just pick up the phone and get our quotes and things like that and go from there.”

Mayor Jerry Lowery said the rest of the process will remain the same as it was before the change. Lowery this does not affect which bids are required to come before the board of aldermen for approval.

“We’ll still need to get three bids,” Lowery said. “We just won’t have to go through the sealed bid process.”

Tindle said the change came about because of a recent adjustment in the state law allowing cities to increase the limit.

“Legislation changed, I think it was last July, that has allowed us to raise that to $25,000,” Tindle said. “And everything has just gotten so expensive it’s just hard to not take bids on everything.”