Divided commissioners court will send letter to GLO seeking tower bid approval

After a very tempestuous discussion, the Gonzales County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 to submit a letter from Hanson Professional Services and Langford Community Management Services to the General Land Office, asking GLO to accept a sole bid by LCRA for the county’s emergency radio tower project.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski, Precinct 3 Commissioner Kevin La Fleur and Precinct 1 Commissioner K.O. “Dell” Whiddon agreed to sign the letter before it is sent to the GLO. County Judge Pat Davis and Precinct 4 Commissioner Collie Boatright voted against sending the letter, stating they believed the county should rebid the project due to protests raised by potential bidders Motorola and Victoria Communications Systems about incorrect information within the bidding notice and a lack of time given to properly prepare tower specifications.

Gonzales County opened bids Monday, April 15, for the project, which is being paid for through a $6,071,588.57 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) from the General Land Office Mitigation Funding cycle as a result of the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The county received just one bid from LCRA and two notices of intent to no-bid and protest from Motorola and VCS.

Davis said he was told that “the GLO would air on the side of caution and will make the county go out for bids again to make this as fair as possible.”

“Since the county only received one bid initially, GLO stated they would require a rebid to try to get more bids,” Davis said. “It also stated that it would be beneficial for the county attorney to review these bids and no-bid protest to make recommendations to the court on how to proceed.

“We recommend that the county reject the bids and that all bidders come present to commissioners court and to go for bid again. This would show due diligence and then the county provided a fair and open bidding process to all the bidders.”

Davis said he had spoken to Shannon Longoria, a representative of the GLO, who expressed to Davis concerns that HUD could come back in and audit the project five years down the line and find the county responsible for repaying the money “if we would proceed with this not having more than one bid, not being fair to the vendors … especially since the advertisement was actually wrong in the paper.”

“It would be a shame if we would have to pay money back because of something that we didn't do,” Davis said Longoria told him.

County Attorney Paul Watkins said his opinion of the matter has not changed and “it was not a fair bidding process.”

“If you were in bidding, and the bid was noticed as Precinct two, but it was Precinct Three, is that a fair bid?” Watkins asked. “That's exactly what's happening here. The parties didn't get fair notice as to what this was.”

In reading the letter from Hanson and Langford, Brzozowski said the county “is asking for GLO to approve and accept a single bid in the case due to the difficulty and the lack of contractors that provide this service.”

“There are too limited vendors that provide tower communications infrastructure and going out to bid for a second time would most likely not provide a different outcome for bidders,” Brzozowski read. “It would however delay construction, creating an increase in the cost for the county.”

Brzozowski said state law specifies that before a contract is awarded, a bidder must give written notice to the officer authorized to open bids if the bidder intends to protest the award of the contract. He stated the protests received from Motorola and VCS “were not from bidders because both Motorola and VCS stated their intent not to bid and do not appear to be eligible to submit a protest under this section.”

The commissioner said the options available to Gonzales County would be either to award the contract to LCRA as the bidder who submitted the lowest and most qualified bid, or to reject all bids and republish the notice in the Inquirer.

“The likelihood of receiving only one bid or potentially two bids were the expectations since the project’s conception,” Brzozowski read. “This is due to the lack of contractors performing this type of communication work. Rebidding and further outreach efforts may provide additional potential subprime contractors to the prime bidder, however, would not be expected to expand the number of communication systems frequently available in the area.”

Brzozowski said the incorrect information on the notice could be considered “a formality that could be waived” as the use of the Civicast website could be determined to be “a convenience above and beyond the required notification.”

He dismissed claims that there was not enough turnaround time for bidders to bid on the project or that the county had cherry-picked a system, stating the court had chosen to go with a 700-800 MHz system and that while “vendors who currently operate 700-800 MHz systems in close proximity to the county may be able to provide some components more efficiently from their existing infrastructure, this does not prevent other vendors from bidding.”

“I think we’ve covered all our tracks on this,” Brzozowski said. “It’s going to cost us money to go back. The only thing that can happen is they’ll say ‘no we want you to go out again,” or they’ll say, ‘yes, it’s good.’”

Davis said when he received the initial copy of the letter read by Brzozowski, he was shocked to find it was made to look as if he had written it and was intended for him to sign.

“I don't agree with it, so I didn't want to sign it,” Davis said. “I know we had a meeting with GLO to clarify that we are handling this correctly, and I don't ever remember saying that we're going to have a letter to do that.

“I’m not signing it because I don’t agree with it. I don’t want in five years, when your are retired and gone, to have to come back on this. They requested that the court go out for rebid. It specifically states in the letter they suggested that the court reject the bid, be fair, go back out for bid again.

“Whoever gets it gets it, just do it right,” Davis added. “I didn't come into this job to do things wrong. And apparently, if y'all want to do it wrong, you have the right to do so.”

“You can't tell us if we're doing some right and wrong. You've only got one vote just like the rest of us!” Brzozowski retorted. “There's two important words that you need to learn as a judge. You know ‘me’ but there's another word called ‘we.’ When you learn that word, then we'll all get the job done. Not ‘me,’ but ‘we.’”

VCS representative Anita Scoggins told the court she wanted a “fair opportunity to bid” and said she had submitted her concerns in writing about the bid process and turnaround time in the online portal Hanson and Langford were using.

“Who received the questions that were submitted on the portal?” Scoggins asked. “That to me is notice that there is something I don’t feel capable of doing. I asked that there be more time. I submitted that in the portal and it was my understanding you received it.

“I asked for a minimum of three months. You said proper notice was not provided to you that I was going to submit a letter of protest, but it was on your portal.”

Brzozowski responded to Scoggins, saying “it’s your fault, not ours, that you couldn’t give us a bid. We're not worried if you have the time to do it. We put it out there and you bid on it. That’s not our problem. That’s yours.”

“It is not practical,” Scoggins said. “You had tower crews that were on site that day that would not bid it because it was not enough time to design towers for you and bid them. You want towers that are not going to be properly engineered? You did not give me enough time to properly engineer towers. Since five years ago, when this was initially started, you moved the tower site and we didn't have any of that information until you put this bid packet out.”

Scoggins said she is trying to be “diligent with being your best advocate, because all I want is your people in this area to have what they need the right way.”

“We have been here and we have helped as much as we possibly can,” Scoggins said. “My goal is to take care of you and be a good bidder for you. But I cannot build a tower or design a tower or engineer a tower or climb a tower myself, so I rely on that to be properly done by the right people, which there was no tower crew that could effectively engineer those towers for you in that time period — unless somebody had that information beforehand.”