Town of Olds council voted to defer making a decision about the 2012 fuel tender at its meeting on March 12.
Three companies bid on the contract, and two of them were within $25 of each other. However, town administration recommended keeping the current supplier, even though it was not offering the lowest prices.
Councillors questioned administration's decision.
“Are we sending out the wrong message to people when we choose not to accept tenders with the lowest prices?” asked Coun. Mary Jane Harper.
“I know that $25 is not significant, but that's for one year with a recommendation that it carry one for a second year as well.”
Coun. Wade Bearchell questioned the lack of numbers and details in the document presented to council.
“As far as this request for decision goes, I did not see any numbers in it that gave that rack rate,” he said.
“I don't know if I missed it. Is it included in here? No, so what was that?”
Bearchell added that the same situation had happened with the 2011 fuel tender.
“I felt that it was deceiving and not fair to the people that had to vote, to the members of council that voted for, because in my mind the information was false,” he said.
“In the last bid, I thought it was wrong to bid on a daily price, which was not fair. The whole process in the last bid to me was compromised.”
Director of corporate services Terryl Allen explained that town administration does not make the decision based on price alone.
“Generally, the accounting systems of the two proponents are vastly different. We do have experience from the year before with an accounting system that was quite cumbersome. It did not meet a lot of our requirements and that has not changed,” Allen said.
“The organization that we are with right now definitely has met many needs. That was taken into account, in addition to the annual cost difference.”
The discussion ended with town CAO Norm McInnis proposing to defer the tender decision to the last March council meeting.
“We will bring forward a different request for decision with much more information, including last year's request for decision and the process that we went through,” McInnis said.
