New Business item 19-75 on the April 15, 2019 Saline City Council agenda seemed straightforward enough. [1]
[Acknowledge] receipt of the April 10, 2019 memo from City Manager Campbell; to approve or not approve the request to renew the Swisher Commercial Reality Agreement for another 12 months.
After having been properly moved by Mayor Pro-Tem Linda TerHaar and seconded by Council Member Heidi McClelland, Mayor Brian Marl turned to City Manager Todd Campbell for a brief history of performance, adjustments, and areas of particular focus in the upcoming year. Broker Tony Caprarese the spoke on behalf of Swisher, highlighting accomplishments that include properties on East Michigan Avenue and 600 North Maple. [2-5]
The matter was then turned over for questions from Council. When recognized, Member Christen Mitchell began by noting that this proposal would have the arrangement with Swisher renewed for a sixth year. “Is that the last time this type of service was bid out?” she asked our City Manager.
It was.
Ms Mitchell then went on to express “concern — in no way personal” regarding elected officials’ responsibility “with public dollars” to put such contracts out for bid. “So I’m not going to support this tonight — solely for that reason.”
Most people think of a “bid” strictly in monetary terms. The story attributed to the late Senator John Glenn from Ohio, who, as an astronaut is said to have noted while sitting atop a rocket waiting for launch that “it had been built by the lowest bidder.” [6]
Competitive bidding is often associated with some form of structured “Request for Proposals,” or “RFP.” This or some other form of document (from among a variety in the business terminology alphabet soup) suggests that the issuing party knows more or less exactly what it needs, along with a degree of expectation for getting there. [7,8]
As a general rule, it is believed that stewardship over constituent interests are best reflected by pursuit of competitive bidding processes as a matter of routine, and that exceptions to this should be, again, reliably subjected to specific justification. This works extremely well in repeat commodity item purchases, as well for easily understood and routinized services. [9,10]
Two key areas may well provide structure of justifying a raised bar that must be met before competitive bids are called for or considered. These are “relationship” and “creativity” —necessarily associated with non-routine item and service contract renewals.
An example of relationship in business would include instances where the best possible vendor performance might come from investments made contemporaneously or beyond that which could reasonably be recovered during any given contract period.
Take for example John Olsen, immediate past executive director of the Saline Area Chamber of Commerce. If he had been a contract employee and not chosen to retire from that job, the value of his institutional acquired over years on the job would have contributed to making him a preferred provider of that service when time for contract renewal come up, above and beyond all simple performance (à la RFP) specifications. [11]
Creativity is as good as any for a label to describe the sometimes necessary force required to deliver desired outcome through means otherwise at odds with what has been specified up-front. Though well beyond the typical agenda items brought before Saline City Council, think Dr John C Houbolt and the “lunar-orbit-rendezvous” concept he successfully pitched to Dr Wernher von Braun against conventional thinking. [12]
Saline City Council Member Janet Dillon spoke in support of Council Member Mitchell two days ago on New Business agenda item 19-75.
I will echo what Ms Mitchell has just said, that it has been six years with the property, and I do feel like we have become lax in bidding things out at times.
In response, Mayor Marl stated that he would “take issue, respectfully, with the comment that we were ‘lax’ on bidding things out. I don’t—. That’s not accurate.
Additionally, I would add that ‘bidding things out’ is important. That’s indicative of an organization that commits itself to a standard of excellence. But when we have seen the kind of results we’ve seen from Mr Caprarese, specifically, and Swisher Commercial, I think it’s important to stay the course and continue the relationship at least for the next twelve months.
In the end, this motion carried by a voice vote of five in favor, one against; Council Member Jack Ceo was absent.
References
- “Saline City Michigan: City Council > Agenda Packet > 2019 > City Council Agenda Packet April 15, 2019” Documents on Demand.
- “Saline City Council Meeting 4-15-2019” City of Saline (April 16, 2019) Vimeo.
- Swisher Commercial (home page).
- “Tony Caprarese, Vice President/Partner” Swisher Commercial.
- “It’s Important to Know Both History and the Market for Strategic Business Development in Saline” Dell Deaton (May 15, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “Remembering John Glenn, Lawmaker” Stephen M Ryan (December 9, 2016) Roll Call.
- “Reqeust for Proposal” Inc.
- “Winning Request-For-Proposal Strategies for Sales Teams” John Boyens (December 28, 2017) Forbes.
- “The Legal Theory of Competitive Bidding for Government Contracts” Omer Dekel (Winter 2008) Public Contract Law Journal.
- “What makes something a commodity?” (January 3, 2017) The Economist.
- “Steps Have Been Taken To Debrief John Olsen Before His Tenure With Saline Area Chamber Of Commerce Closes” Dell Deaton (October 2, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “The Saturn V Story: From Nazi Roots to America’s Moon Rocket” Alex Hollings (February 6, 2019) Popular Mechanics.
