Gonzales County commissioners tabled action on whether to accept or reject a sole bid by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) for new emergency communications radio towers after discussion Monday, Oct. 28.
The county had rebid the project in the Inquirer in June and on CivCast for a “P25 Phase 2 standards-based 700/800 MHz trunked radio system to provide greater county-wide communications coverage and message capacity.”
The project would include three new towers to be located in Gonzales, Belmont and Waelder, along with two new shelters, three emergency backup generators, a trunked radio network with geographically-redundant central control systems, interface with or replacement of existing dispatch console equipment, and redundant IP-based microwave backhaul.
Anna Aldridge, Hanson Professional services vice president and senior project manager, told commissioners the county received only one bid on the tower project during the Sept. 12 bid opening, despite having 37 parties show interest.
The bid received from LCRA was for $4.998 million, which was $73,777.36 over the county’s construction budget, with a construction time of 399 days from notice to proceed to substantial completion. The county would have to pay the overage out of its own funds and not from the county’s $6,071,588.57 GLO Mitigation Funding Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) it received due to Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
LCRA was the sole bidder the first time the project was bid in April as Motorola originally submitted a notice of intent to no-bid and protest, which Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski brought up Monday. GLO required the project to be rebid because there was only one bidder the first time around.
“I was just curious, because they (Motorola) were complaining about that didn't have enough time, and after we went ahead and gave them, like, three months, and then they didn't bid on it?” Brzozowski asked.
“They knew that when they were standing up here and they complained about they didn't have enough time, and we gave them that time, which held the county up about four months or better, which that probably cost us some money. We could have been building some of these towers right now.”
La Fleur asked LCRA representative Erik Andersen if his organization had “any additions, subtractions, or anything you would like to negotiate with the county before we talk about this,” which caused Andersen to ask if the county always negotiated in open session and led County Attorney Paul Watkins to respond commissioners could not go down that road legally.
Precinct 3 Commissioner Kevin La Fleur suggested commissioners should set another meeting to discuss the LCRA bid so it is posted properly and they can go into closed session, if necessary.
Brzozowski also questioned wording on an agenda item which called for the court to “Discuss, consider and possible action to reject the one (1) bid submitted for the GLO Contract#22-085-052-D305 Emergency Communications Tower Project’
“We normally always have … discuss, consider and possible action, but why is ‘reject the one bid’ and we haven't even talked about it yet?” Brzozowski asked. “How do we know if we want to reject it? I mean, why is that put in there? Where did that wording come from?”
Jessica Daidone from Langford Community Associates, the grant manager for the county, said the wording was so that if the county did decide to look into a possible agreement with Greater Austin Travis Regional Radio System (GATRRS) instead as an option, they “wouldn’t have to prolong it to the next court, so it was just to try and save time” since they would have to reject the LCRA bid outright.
Brzozowzki told Daidone he thought the wording seemed “one-sided” as if it were forcing the court to only be able to reject the bid instead of accept it and called her out for this.
“You know, the sign up there says Commissioners Court, unless they took it down, so I think the Commissioners Court has the right to make that decision,” Brzozowski said. “That seems one-sided to me. We've never done that in 18 years I've been here, and I don't understand why you did it that way.”
Brzozowski and County Judge Pat Davis then got into a back-and-forth conversation over the state of communications that exist between members of the court, with Brzozowski voicing his displeasure he wasn’t given more information about GATRRS sooner, while Davis said Brzozowski, La Fleur and Precinct 1 Commmissioner K.O. “Dell” Whiddon had been keeping him and Precinct 4 Commissioner Collie Boatright out of the loop when it came to any communications they had with LCRA.
Brzozowski also noted he, La Fleur and Whiddon had wanted to send a letter to GLO asking to accept the first LCRA bid despite it being the only one and accused Davis of going around them with his own letter that said he disagreed with that stance.
“So I guess GLO got excited,” Brzozowski said. “We got the judge complaining and the commissioners, so they said, ‘You’ve got to rebid it.’ Well, we rebid it, but now (the agenda) says reject the bid. I mean this, this isn't right!”
Asked by Brzozowski, Watkins said the top of the agenda contains a “catch-all” in the wording that “allows you to take action on anything that’s there, so you can accept it or reject it.”
Brzozowski and La Fleur then asked how they could accept or reject the bid from LCRA when they hadn’t even seen what it entails, other than just getting the amount of the bid from Aldridge.
“What are we getting for the money? I mean, is there anything in there that we didn't ask for, any pluses or anything?” Brzozowski asked.
Brzozowski then moved to table the bid until he and La Fleur could “get the chance to look at, look it over, and ask questions and see what's going on. And I think Commissioner Whiddon (who was absent Monday) needs to be here to represent his constituents.”
Watkins reminded the court if they all wanted to be present for a meeting to “negotiate with the contractor or talk about the contract or the bid and you all want to be able to participate in the meeting, the only way for that to happen is a closed meeting.”
Commissioners voted in favor of tabling the bid until another meeting can be called.