By By Adam Prestridge
It's back to the drawing board for the Atmore City Council.
Earlier this month, Ward International was declared the lowest bidder for sale of two trash/debris trucks to the city for use by the Street &Sanitation Department at a price of $89,144 per truck. The bid was awarded pending review of bid specifications.
During Monday afternoon's council meeting, mayor Howard Shell informed the council that there was a drawback with the bid specifications.
"At our last council meeting, a decision was made to accept the low bid trucks that met all specifications with regard to the sale to the city of two trash/debris trucks," Shell said. "However, upon reviewing the bid submitted, it appears that the original bid package that was sent out to the various dealers either did not reflect or did not adequately reflect exactly what the city wanted in regard to the vehicle's chassis or power train – that is whether the bid would be based on a manual transmission or an automatic transmission."
According to Shell, one of the biggest hang-ups was that the bid price from Ward International was for manual transmission trucks.
"That is not what we wanted or needed," Shell said. "From the beginning, it was the street department's desire and intent to purchase trucks with automatic transmissions. It is therefore my recommendation to the council, in the spirit of fair play, that this project be re-bid and that necessary steps are taken to ensure the new bid packages are perfectly clear as to exactly what we need with respects to all components of these trucks."
The council unanimously agreed to reject all bids received and issue new bid packages with correct specifications.
In other business, the council:
"There is still work to be done by both the planning board and the city council, but they wanted the councils blessing to continue at this time," Shell said.
The council agreed to seek clarification of the issue to include historical districts.