By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            In the old days, thick paper packets would arrive at the Levy County Courthouse filled with bids from companies that wanted to do business with Levy County Commission. A bid committee would open the packets and go through them behind closed doors. The lowest and best bid would be selected. The bid committee meetings were open to the public but few people attended and there were sometimes suspicions that the process wasn’t entirely above board.

            On Tuesday, a new generation of Levy County Commissioners was confronted with concerns that staff in the county office may have failed to disclose to contractors that the county was operating with an electronic bidding system known as DemandStar. Were local contractors informed about the system? If they knew about it, did they become frustrated with trying to submit bids on DemandStar, or were there other problems?

            The awarding of a bid for the reroofing of the Levy County Road Department seemed to confirm suspicions that the system wasn’t fair to local contractors. That’s because no local contractors were among the bidders. The winning bidder was a company from Port Charlotte, Fla. 220 miles south of Bronson. Other bidders were from Texas, Alabama, Lake City, and Dunnellon, but none were from Levy County.

            Levy County Commissioner Desiree Mills said she felt that roofer Charlie Kennedy’s comments about DemandStar at Tuesday’s board meeting were “well taken.” Kennedy said he was never told about DemandStar until a county employee mentioned it to him. He said he didn’t bid on the road department roof contract because the specifications were wrong. He thought the county would rebid the contract.

            Correcting Problem, Source of Frustration

Mills said she has talked to Procurement Coordinator Alicia Tretheway about setting a workshop date where the county can meet with contractors to address their concerns about DemandStar. No firm date has been set. Tretheway has proposed October 25 at 5:30 p.m. in the Levy County Government Center but she wants all five commissioners to attend and all have different schedules. The date isn’t firm.

            “My vendors mentioned things such as this to me. I want to attempt to work with vendors and correct this,” Mills said. “Mrs. Tretheway and I are planning a workshop for vendors about what the problems are so we can iron out some issues.”

            Commission Chairman Matt Brooks said DemandStar has been a source of frustration for him. He said he was glad to hear that different people are working on solutions. He said the important thing to remember is the county needs “good solutions.” He thinks DemandStar was well intended by this board of commissioners as a way to cast a broader net to attract bidders.

            “In the few instances I’ve seen it work so far, it’s casting the net farther away and I know we can’t talk about local preference, but shorter distances for trades I think is paramount when we’re talking about sitting in an auditorium with no air conditioning,” he said. “We can get the AC work done and if something goes wrong, I think it would behoove us not to have someone from Alabama or Miami on call to come here and fix the AC. Common sense would tell us Gainesville, Ocala, or Citrus County or local in Levy County. I think while DemandStar was well intended, I think it definitely needs to be addressed that Levy County has not grown to a Jacksonville or Orlando. We still get to operate like a small county.”

            Five Years of DemandStar

            Levy County Commission staff administrators say they have been using DemandStar since June of 2018, a month after Tretheway started working for the county. Tretheway was asked by Spotlight if the county office notified private contractors in 2018 that a new electronic bidding system was being used. She said she notified her vendor contacts, but she said the various departments in county government were also responsible for contacting their most frequently used vendors.

            “That is information I wouldn’t have access to. I don’t have all the vendors’ names and email addresses. I don’t have that information, so departments are also responsible for contacting the people that they work with the most,” Tretheway said.

            There was discussion Tuesday among county commissioners about the importance of updating the contact list for vendors as one way of improving communications with businesses. Tretheway said she can’t do the update. She doesn’t have access to the information at the clerk’s office. She said when a new vendor comes into the county’s system, they send her information, and the information is then submitted to the clerk’s office. She said the clerk’s office is responsible for updating the county commission’s “fund management system” where vendor information is stored.

            Can’t Edit Clerk’s Vendor Data

            “I cannot edit those vendors. I cannot update those vendors,” she said. “The vendors are responsible for submitting that information to myself or to departments or directly to Levy Finance (the clerk’s office),” she said. “Once they are in the system, they are in the system, unless they change their remit-to address. We have several vendors that change their remit-to address frequently.”

            Vendors aren’t paid unless they update their remit-to address with the county, she said.

            County Coordinator Wilbur Dean said several contractors from this area reviewed specifications for the county road department roof contract but didn’t submit a bid.

            “You had local contractors that downloaded the bid specification but did not put in a bid so there’s a difference between the number of people who placed a bid than just the ones who reviewed it,” Dean said.

            Bidding vs. Just Looking

            Dean said the county has downloaded the bids for replacement of the air conditioners in the auditorium of the Levy County Government Center but he and Tretheway haven’t reviewed them to determine if the bidders met all the requirements of the contract. He said the documents won’t be made available to the public until the bids are reviewed.

            The county coordinator said he was surprised by the controversy over DemandStar.

            “We’ve never had any controversy until now. I’m not sure what has generated all the controversy. We can go through and show every bid we’ve put on DemandStar and the responses and all that,” he said.

            Dean was asked about the fact that the winning bid for the road department roof contract was awarded to a Port Charlotte company and the bidders came from as far away as Texas and Alabama.

            Casting Broad Net, No Local Preference

            “We are casting a broad net. I will agree with that, but when you look at what state statute says you cannot have a local preference. The other side of that is that anytime you have federal funds you’ve got to make sure you are in compliance with federal regulations. If we had used nothing but local funds for the roof project, we would have had a local option possibly, but there’s nowhere that we don’t co-mingle our funds. The money we’re using for the road department roof – if you look at the equipment that we sold at auction that is paying for the roofing project – the equipment was purchased with federal and state grant money. When you put that money in the general fund it is co-mingled.”

            Avoiding Bid Manipulation

            Dean said the county chose the DemandStar system because “it offered the county the best possible way to avoid manipulating a bid for anybody.”

            “The last thing you don’t want to have to defend because there’s hardly no defense against it is if somebody says, hey, you gave them a heads up about what we turned in and how do you defend against that,” Dean said.

            He said he agreed with Brooks’ analysis that it is better if the county doesn’t have to rely on a vendor from Alabama to fix the air conditioning system in the auditorium if it breaks down.

            “It is a good point and that’s something we have to look at in the contract,” he said.

            Dean said he thinks the biggest thing the county needs to do is make sure the vendor contact information is “accurate and correct, so we can make sure they are included in the process. The other side of this is we can get a different (bidding) platform. This one is free. A lot of cities and counties use this one. But there are different platforms we could use that we would have to pay for.”

            Asked if the county could give DemandStar a database with all the local contractors listed. Dean said it’s something to consider.

            “We could go through and make sure they were included in that database,” he said.

            Dean said the county would look at all its options, but he said it’s not a decision that can be made overnight. He said one possibility is to go back to the old way of the county advertising its projects in all the local newspapers.

            “How much of this is incumbent on the county to make them aware and how much is incumbent on the potential bidder to be vigilant and look for the work out there?” Dean said.

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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting August 8, 2023; Posted August 9, 2023