WINNEMUCCA - The city awarded a bid to Intermountain Slurry Seal for its annual chip seal project at last week's city council meeting. The city's portion of the cost is $533,246.50 and the county's portion is $145,476.80 for a total project cost of $678,723.30.
Although typically the bid is awarded to the lowest bidder, this year the bid actually went to the second lowest bidder due to a legal technicality.
According to Intermountain's objection, Valley Slurry, whose bid came in at $661,207.86, failed to provide a required affidavit with its bid that attests to the number of workers on the project with Nevada driver's licenses and the number of vehicles used on the project that are registered in Nevada (in accordance with Nevada Revised Statute).
This was a legitimate objection by Intermountain, according to City Attorney Kent Maher, and failure to comply with the NRS requirement makes Valley Slurry non-responsive (and a bid cannot be awarded to a non-responsive bidder).
To make matters more interesting, Valley Slurry also raised an objection to Intermountain's bid, saying that not all the principals of the company signed the document in the six spaces provided.
However, Maher said at the meeting there is no place in the document that states that all six lines have to be used. He said that the city has the right to waive that as an irregularity and, in his opinion, should.
"My recommendation is that you find the irregularity in Intermountain is non-material and it be waived and you award (the bid) to Intermountain," he said.
Mayor Di An Putnam said at the meeting that the city had two viable options: reject all bids and rebid, which would put the project behind, or determine that Intermountain was the lowest responsive and responsible bid. The council voted to go with the latter and waived the issue with the signatures as an irregularity.
City Manager/Engineer Steve West said that last year the city awarded the bid to Valley Slurry, but that both companies do a nice job.
"They are the two biggest players in chip seal in the region," West said.
West said now that the bid has been approved by city and county, it will be sent to the contractor, who will then have two weeks to sign the contract. From there, the contractor has 90 days to schedule the project.
Some of the city's main streets will be part of the chip seal project this summer, including Minor Street, Bridge Street, Fairground Road, East Fourth Street and Mizpah Street. Some smaller streets will also be completed.
West said the city is on a five-year plan for street maintenance, but because the asphalt-rubber product used in the chip seal is so long-lasting, some of the side residential streets can go closer to seven years without needing to be re-done. Some of the primary collector streets, however, have to be done sooner (closer to four years).
West said that he thinks the project will probably be done in July or August. He said that one convenient thing about the chip seal process is that it only requires sections of streets to be closed to traffic for a couple of hours - a morning or afternoon.
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