posting
05-08-2006, 06:13 PM
Composting - Something Rotten in Council?
Something stinks in council's no-composting decision and it's not the table scraps we've been hoarding with the expectation the city will soon pick them up.
Far be it from the Whig to give full context to council issues, but it appears politics may have just played a very nasty role in what was supposed to be a fair and competitive tender process. When the city spends months leading a bunch of private companies through a request for proposals and staff recommends a winning bid and then, for reasons that are fuzzy at best, council decides to overturn the staff recommendation and opts instead to retender the whole project while one of the losers (who is coincidentally from Kingston while the winner is not) looks on from the public gallery and then publicly pats council on the back for making a wise decision, well, that smells a little off wouldn't you say?
A proposal call is a competition and the reason governments hold them is, supposedly, to ensure that all qualified companies get a fair chance to win. Competition means someone's gotta win and everyone else loses. If council had qualified bidders submitting viable proposals - which presumably was the case here, since staff recommended a winner - then it is neither fair nor competitive to toss out the whole batch and order the process begun from scratch. Council also reinforces Kingston's parochial, business-unfriendly attitude. Here we had a Belleville company wanting to do business in Kingston, was the recommended winner of this proposal call, and we threw out the process and the winning bid possibly because a Kingston company - which made a last-minute plea to the committee but does not have the technology in place to do the job, according to the Whig - lobbied for the competition to be held a few months from now so it would have a better chance to win?
How is it fair or competitive to start the proposal call over again in order to allow one company time to import German equipment, build a sod farm and get a viable composting system up and running so it can enter a better proposal in the fall? Is it any wonder Kingston can't lure private firms to do business here?
Anyone who has been involved in a request for proposals knows full well the whining and wailing, the accusations of unfairness and the political lobbying that emanates from almost every losing bidder on every major proposal call. Private companies firmly believe their proposal is the best and will spare no effort or expense in their efforts to win the big deals. (Hello Ottawa Senators and Kingston arenas) It is incumbent on city staff, council and committees to cut through the politics, marketing and drama and arrive at a technical and financial solution that is best for citizens, which is precisely what city staff did with the composting bids. A council that can be persuaded to ignore the recommendations of professional staff on something as important as proposal selection and allow politics to give one company an advantage in a public tender process may have lost the ability to make decisions that are in the best interests of the community. Citizens should be extra vigilant on the awarding of LVEC and multiplex contracts to ensure they are getting the best technical and financial - as opposed to political - deal.
Something stinks in council's no-composting decision and it's not the table scraps we've been hoarding with the expectation the city will soon pick them up.
Far be it from the Whig to give full context to council issues, but it appears politics may have just played a very nasty role in what was supposed to be a fair and competitive tender process. When the city spends months leading a bunch of private companies through a request for proposals and staff recommends a winning bid and then, for reasons that are fuzzy at best, council decides to overturn the staff recommendation and opts instead to retender the whole project while one of the losers (who is coincidentally from Kingston while the winner is not) looks on from the public gallery and then publicly pats council on the back for making a wise decision, well, that smells a little off wouldn't you say?
A proposal call is a competition and the reason governments hold them is, supposedly, to ensure that all qualified companies get a fair chance to win. Competition means someone's gotta win and everyone else loses. If council had qualified bidders submitting viable proposals - which presumably was the case here, since staff recommended a winner - then it is neither fair nor competitive to toss out the whole batch and order the process begun from scratch. Council also reinforces Kingston's parochial, business-unfriendly attitude. Here we had a Belleville company wanting to do business in Kingston, was the recommended winner of this proposal call, and we threw out the process and the winning bid possibly because a Kingston company - which made a last-minute plea to the committee but does not have the technology in place to do the job, according to the Whig - lobbied for the competition to be held a few months from now so it would have a better chance to win?
How is it fair or competitive to start the proposal call over again in order to allow one company time to import German equipment, build a sod farm and get a viable composting system up and running so it can enter a better proposal in the fall? Is it any wonder Kingston can't lure private firms to do business here?
Anyone who has been involved in a request for proposals knows full well the whining and wailing, the accusations of unfairness and the political lobbying that emanates from almost every losing bidder on every major proposal call. Private companies firmly believe their proposal is the best and will spare no effort or expense in their efforts to win the big deals. (Hello Ottawa Senators and Kingston arenas) It is incumbent on city staff, council and committees to cut through the politics, marketing and drama and arrive at a technical and financial solution that is best for citizens, which is precisely what city staff did with the composting bids. A council that can be persuaded to ignore the recommendations of professional staff on something as important as proposal selection and allow politics to give one company an advantage in a public tender process may have lost the ability to make decisions that are in the best interests of the community. Citizens should be extra vigilant on the awarding of LVEC and multiplex contracts to ensure they are getting the best technical and financial - as opposed to political - deal.