News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Sparta Board of Aldermen voted Thursday to rebid two chemical supply contracts after the vendor did not honor its original price.
City Administrator Brad Hennessee said the company indicated that availability and costs increased the unit price.
“We went to the next lowest bidder and asked them if they would honor their bid and they said no,” Hennessee said. “It puts us in the position of having to rebid those two items for the remainder of the budget year.”
Hennessee said the city usually applies a consequence for not fulfilling a price by withholding the vendor from bidding for a full year. However in this case, Hennessee said the company has a separate trademarked chemical that is used to treat city water.
“We don’t like having to do that,” Hennessee said. “There is normally consequences to vendors that do that. We looked into it, and they may have us.”
Hennessee said if the city did punish the company, the vendor might consider withdrawing its bid for the trademarked chemical. Hennessee said without the supply, the whole water treatment process would have to change.
“If they pull their bid for that one, we have to go to TDEC to change the process,” Hennessee said. “We don’t want to do that. We don’t like being in the situation to have to rebid.”
Hennessee said the situation may be the new normal for bid purchasing. Hennessee said a similar situation happened with a local concrete provider.
“It’s came up in conversation several times with different bidders that they asked us to bid prices out for shorter periods of time,” Hennessee said. “We’ve stayed away from that so far. We normally do it on a one-year basis. Concrete we had to do monthly. This we’re thinking chemical bids may be a six-month bid.”
