The Village of Airmont strives to comply with all requirements associated with the procurement process. Recently, the Village took steps to amend its local law on procurement to correct deficiencies in that law and to allow amendment of the procurement policy by resolution, so that any issues with the procurement policy could be addressed in a more timely manner.
In reviewing procurements, the Village determined that recent procurements concerning road paving/ road maintenance (“Bids”) in the Village were published in only one of two official Village newspapers. The Bids were advertised in the Hamodia newspaper, but not in the other official newspaper (Rockland Journal News). The Village asked legal counsel to review this issue and report back to the Village Board. Village legal counsel has advised the Village that any Village notice that requires publication must be published in both official newspapers of the Village.
Despite the two recent advertisements being only in one official newspaper, in the case of the road paving bid, three quotes were actually received by the Village. For the road maintenance bid, two bids were received. The road maintenance bid had also been posted on the Village website and on an internet site called Bidnet which is a popular, nationwide bidding site where vendors can receive bid notifications and search for bids on an ongoing basis. With respect to the two bids for the road maintenance, the costs for the services proposed by the winning bidders were determined to be reasonable by the Village Engineer for the work to be performed. Further, no complaints or objections were received from any potential bidders complaining that they were not aware of the bids at issue.
The contracts related to the Bids at issue have already been awarded and the paving work has been completed. The road maintenance bid will be effective within a week. Thus, a re-bid solely to address the absence of publication in the other official newspaper would serve no purposes with respect to the paving bid since the work has been completed. Re-bidding the road maintenance work at this point would leave the Village without the availability of road maintenance services while any re-bidding occurred. Further, a re-bid would undermine the competitive bidding process as the bids of those contractors that submitted proposals to the Village are now publicly disclosed and would potentially lead to an unfair advantage to other new proposers. Road maintenance is an important service that concern the safety of residents and other traveling on the Village roads and interruption of such services would be detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of Village residents and other traveling upon our Village roads.
However, the Village desires to ensure compliance with any and all procurement requirements and to heed the advice of legal counsel. Accordingly, in order to address this issue, the Village will not renew any agreement with the road maintenance contractor after 2023 and will require that the work be re-bid for 2024 services in a manner that ensures full compliance with procurement requirements and maximizes the distribution of the bids. We hope this statement clarifies any concerns residents may have regarding this issue.