MCSO car purchase stalls

An earlier plan to purchase new Madison County Sheriff’s Office patrol vehicles from an out-of-county source is now on hold as county officials eye ways to instead involve a local dealer.

The project took a new turn last week when the Madison County Board of Supervisors discussed opening it to sealed bidding, apparently at least partly in a move to save money.

The new proposal discussed at the supervisors’ Aug. 27 workshop meeting called for businesses to submit sealed envelope bids for nine new cars — seven Ford Crown Victorias and two Ford Explorers — all with assorted law enforcement additions like lights and sirens.

“[Madison County Sheriff Erik Weaver] has decided that instead of making a purchase through an existing contract, either through the state contract, or through another locality like York County, he would like to do a local ‘procurement procedure,’” County Administrator Lisa Robertson said at the workshop. “He would like for the board of supervisors to initiate a competitive procurement procedure so that he can receive bids on the vehicles as he has ‘speced’ them out.”

Part of the challenge involved in starting this bidding process is that given the approximate $250,000 amount necessary to pay for the cars, a special procedure must be used. Most of the routine purchases made by the county use a “small purchase procedure,” said Robertson. This entails the administrator or a county department head gathering price quotes on the needed item. However, this only applies for items less than $50,000. For a larger project, state law dictates the types of acceptable formal procedures, she said.

For the sheriff’s new cars the procedure will probably be competitive sealed bidding, commonly called IFB (invitation for bids). In this process, the bidding will be open to the public, the project has to be announced at least 10 days before the bids are due, and people, including a certain number from a state-approved list, can bid on a list of specified requirements, said Robertson. The lowest bidder is awarded the contract.

After all the bids are opened, one must be deemed acceptable or the whole process has to start again.

“You can reject all of the bids and start over, if you want to, but you can’t negotiate with the low bidder for a better price by changing the specifications,” she said.

This will be at least the second time that the board begins the process of finding a vendor for these cars. The initial request for the cars was approved by a majority of the supervisors at their July 14 meeting after the sheriff’s office released a letter in November 2008 requesting the vehicles. The sheriff has previously said that several of the patrol cars his deputies use have more than 100,000 miles on them and that operating them is a a “liability.”

However, since the sheriff more recently requested additional time to collect more price quotes for the project, the board rescinded its resolution at its July 30 workshop meeting and started this new process, Robertson told The Eagle via an e-mail message.

“I don’t know,” Supervisors Vice Chairman James Arrington said about the new proposed bidding process at last week’s workshop. “This thing is complicated as hell. I’d thought you’d have these cars and they’d have 100,000 miles on them by now.”

The previous buying solution involved purchasing the cars on a three- or four-year leasing schedule from a state supplier, Robertson said at a July meeting. The apparent issue with this arrangement was that it denied non-state contractors a chance to bid on the project.

“In order for a [Madison County] person to have an opportunity, unless they are the state contract holder,” said Supervisors Chairman Eddie Dean, “the only other option is to put it out as a sealed bid.”

To open the bid the sheriff had come up with a list of specifications for the cars needed, which he lists as seven Crown Victoria sedans and two Explorer SUVs. Though the specifications remain consistent with the cars initially to be purchased from the state, since the process is being reopened, Arrington suggested that perhaps the details be reviewed as no reasons for choosing the Ford vehicles had been given.

Among the supervisors there was some concern that the bidding process would add expense to the cars and that an acceptable alternative might not be found. In that case, Dean suggested they would return to their previous solution.

“The thing about using the state contractor is that the prices are already exposed, anybody can see them,” said Arrington. “Suppose we look at it and determine that it’s going to cost an extra $2,000 to write the specifications — staff time, legal review, the cost of doing [the bid] — that is a cost we need to consider [in the price of the lowest bid], and it may be that once we consider that cost, despite the fact that he can compete, itit’s still cheaper to buy from the state contractor – I’m willing to say to Eddins Ford that if he can’t offer a lower price then we’re not going to give him an opportunity to bid. And he can tell that up front because the prices from the state contract are exposed.”

However, there were other opinions on the new bidding process. These appeared more focused on the fact that the new process might allow multiple dealerships, like Eddins Ford, which is based in the Madison County community of Oak Hill, to handle the sale.

“I think we ought to go this route because if there’s an opportunity to keep money in the local community we need to look at it,” said Dean.

“It’s my understanding that [the sheriff] already had that conversation with the local vendor, and that the local vendor stated that he believes he can meet or better the price [the sheriff] was looking at with the state contract,” Robertson told the supervisors.

At that point, the group agreed to let the new option continue, with the provision that if the new prices offered in the bidding could not match that offered by the state contractor, they would return to the prior arrangement.

Supervisors Bob Miller and Clark Powers did not attend the workshop.

In other matters at their Aug. 27 workshop, supervisors:

• Previewed a possible painting project to include county buildings with metal roofs where the paint is “bubbling.”

• Deliberated a timetable for reopening the Madison County Courthouse, as well as the best way to secure the site from visitors, for their protection, during Saturday’s Taste of the Mountains street festival. The courthouse is currently in the midst of a major renovation project.

• Enumerated concerns with the proposed redoing of downtown Madison’s Main Street sidewalks. The Virginia Department of Transportation has apparently done some internal restructuring that revised how such projects are carried out, apparently complicating the process.