Village Board struggles with choosing water tower painter
By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
When charged with stewardship of taxpayer dollars, municipalities are required to take the lowest “responsible” bid for the work they are contracting before. Sometimes, determining what is and isn’t a responsible bid can be difficult as the East Troy Village Board found out May 16.
The six bids for the painting of the village’s water tower came back and after evaluation by project engineer Dixon Engineering, the recommendation from them was to take the second lowest bid at $390,000 from Seven Brothers instead of the lowest bid of $294,000 from V&T Painting.
Dixon explained in a memo to Department of Public Works Director Mike Miller it wasn’t recommending V&T because it wasn’t “prequalified with Dixon for any type of project.” According to the memo, prequalification means the contractor has “demonstrated the capability to properly complete the work within the specified time frame.”
The memo goes on to state that V&T has “exhibited severe safety, managerial and workmanship deficiencies in recent project” which resulted in it being removed from Dixon’s prequalification status in 2015. The memo states V&T requested bid specifications for the East Troy project and was warned by Dixon of their status and that they wouldn’t be recommended, but the company choose to submit a bid anyway.
Miller told the board Monday night that he personally checked V&T’s references and had spoken to other municipalities where the company has worked and while they all told him there would be problems with things like cleanup, getting the job done in a timely manner and paperwork, they would hire the company to do more work from them if needed in the future.
“I personally don’t see a reason not to hire this contractor,” Miller said.
Village Board President Randy Timms said he also looked into the deaths of two of V&T’s employees at a jobsite in Ohio, which Dixon was the engineer for as well. Timms said he discovered the employees fell from a water tower they were painting because they weren’t using the proper safety procedures they were supposed to be. OSHA fined V&T Painting $$121,880 on April 11 for safety concerns about lead exposure, scaffold deficiencies and a lack of fall protection.”
While Dixon didn’t recommend using V&T, a company representative told the board Monday night that they would work with the company if the village chose to use them. They cautioned that because V&T would require more oversight than other the other companies they prequalify, their fee would most likely increase somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 for the extra time required to keep a close eye on the jobsite. Even so, the company representative acknowledged, the village would still be saving about $80,000 in taxpayer money for the job.
The board discussed at length the pros and cons for hiring V&T, with new Trustee Matt Johnson expressing great concern at times.
“If it’s not safe, it’s not worth it,” Johnson said.
Timms said his concern was that the village didn’t have enough evidence that the bid offered from V&T was not a “responsible” bid and therefore, the board had no choice but to accept it.
“Dixon won’t tell us why they don’t want to work with V&T,” Timms said. “They just say they don’t want to but won’t give us a reason.”
Johnson said that gave him even “more pause” because it showed the companies don’t work well together.
Miller said it was corporate and V&T that didn’t “like each other” but that the people who would be interacting on the jobsite would be “fine” to work together.
“Good things sometime happen to good companies and to good people,” Trustee Dusty Stanford said.
Trustee Ann Zess expressed concern about the safety of the worker painting the tower and wanted to make sure the village was protected from litigation should something happen.
“So, we’d be holding our breath throughout this project?” Zess asked.
Miller and village Attorney Linda Gray assured her the proper insurance certificates would be in place and verified before a contract was signed and work began.
In the end, the board voted to accept V&T Painting’s bid with Timms, Zess, Stanford and Fred Douglass voting yes and Johnson and Seager voting no.
