Sapulpa Fire Department Chief David Taylor spoke on his decision to reject all bids for building the new fire training facility and administrative building at the City Council study session on Monday, April 5th.
The fourteen bids for the project, which will be located off Route 66, just east of the auto museum, all came in well over the budget of $1.545M. The lowest bid was submitted by A.C. Owen Construction, LLC in the amount of $2.68M for the base bid and $1.28M for the training tower, totaling $3.96M. Taylor contended that based on these numbers, which they hoped would not come in over $3M, all the bids should be rejected and the project should be considered for re-bidding at a future date and time.
Although it would be possible to build only the tower right now, Taylor told Sapulpa Times, “I would like to do the entire project [simultaneously]. It would be no problem to build the tower alone, and that would meet the GO Bond obligation, but I am trying to make the whole project work.”
After answering questions from councilors, Taylor asked them to “bear with me a little longer so I can gather more information. I think I can save the City money. I’d like to handle the project myself.”
He told Sapulpa Times, “I have a degree in construction management from OSU. I have been in the construction business for most of my life, as have most of my staff. We of course would be the general contractor and would sub-out all the different aspects of the project. Right now I’m just trying to bid out all the different pieces and then I would present the concept to [City Manager Joan Riley].”
Taylor said he has also spoken to Public Works Director Steve Hardt about Hardt’s team doing the grade and dirt work, which Taylor estimates would shave about $165K off the bottom line. Councilor Vicki Beyer was concerned about what Hardt’s crew would be neglecting if their focus was diverted to the new fire training facility project, and Hardt and Riley replied that they are “talking about that right now” and will reach a compromise soon.
Riley said that she would set up a meeting within the following two weeks to meet with Taylor, Hardt, the architect, and anyone else involved with the project. “I’m a little wary of making any decision before we know what can or can’t be done,” she stated. However, I do think the bids should be rejected. They are just too high,” Riley concluded.
The rejection of the bids for the new fire training facility was unanimously approved by the Council in its regular meeting.
Taylor told Sapulpa Times that, “I did, however, get some good news on [the rebuilding of fire] station #3 [on South Main Street]. The architect had 3 quotes at current material prices. They were $1.9M, $2.1M, and $2.7M. We were hoping to keep it right at $2M, so we are moving forward and letting the project for bids.”
Speaking on the GO Bond project to acquire a Fire Station Alerting System at the City Council meeting, Taylor asked to waive the sealed bid process and to authorize the purchase of the system from Locution Systems, Inc. He said the total cost would not exceed $194,294, and that Locution is “currently the only manufacturer, distributor, retailer, or provider of an automated voice dispatching system that provides a digitally recorded and complete word and phrase-based human voice automated voice dispatch message system at the levels required for Fire/Rescue/EMS emergency dispatching.” He said that “no other station alerting system shares” the characteristics of this one, and that it “provides 99% accuracy and would interface” with the Spillman CAD System that is already in place.
City Attorney David Widdoes said that after reviewing the documentation and researching the request, “City legal has concluded that the [system] qualifies for sole source procurement, in that the item is sufficiently unique, this uniqueness is substantially related to the intended use, purpose, and performance of the equipment, and similar equipment from other sources cannot perform the desired objectives.”
This was unanimously approved by the council.
“Ongoing maintenance” of the Spillman CAD system is “a problem that [Police Chief Mike] Reed and I are facing,” right now, said Taylor. “We are trying to work on it together. There are some in-house employees who have been working on it enormously. We definitely need some full-time IT help on this. There is always something that needs to be addressed; a lot of things we were told in the beginning didn’t go the way they were promised and I’ve been a little disappointed with the service.”
Councilor Bruce Bledsoe said, “So this IT employee could be a shared resource between the police and fire departments?” Taylor said, “Yes and I believe we have the go ahead to hire someone for this purpose.” Riley affirmed that, “Yes, if we’d found someone with experience with that CAD system, we’d have already hired them.”
