The Little Rock Sanitary Sewer Committee affirmed its initial decision to award a $5.5 million contract to the second-lowest bidder Wednesday, despite objections from the owner of a company that bid a lesser amount.
At a meeting last month, the committee unanimously voted that it was in the best interest of ratepayers to award Hot Springs’ Heller Co. Inc. the pipe-bursting contract to replace leaking sewer lines in areas surrounding the Country Club of Little Rock. Wastewater staff members had recommended that the committee grant the project to another company, KAJACS Contractors Inc. of Missouri, because its bid came in about $124,000 less than Heller’s.
But the utility also noted some problems with KAJACS’ incomplete and unsigned paperwork not meeting requirements - something wastewater officials chose to consider a formality and waive. The committee also was told at that original meeting that KAJACS had no experience with pipe-bursting work.
City Director Lance Hines, who serves as a liaison between the Board of Directors and the sewer committee, objected to KAJACS doing the project because both the company and its owner have pleaded guilty to felony mail fraud charges in other states.
KAJACS owner Michael Persons had an attorney object to the committee’s initial ruling, and asked committee members at an April 3 special meeting to reverse their decision. He said he hired someone with years of pipe-bursting experience for the project, had researched the method extensively and that he could do the job.
Committee members were unable to make a decision at that meeting and decided to defer the matter until Wednesday’s regularly scheduled meeting. But the committee again hesitated Wednesday, with a minute or more of silence before any member made a motion.
Member Pete Hornibrook ended up making the motion to affirm the committee’s vote to award the contract to Heller, and that motion passed in a 4-1 vote. Hornibrook, Ken Griffey, Pat Miller and Richard Mays voted in favor, and Jean Block voted against. Chairman Marilyn Perryman didn’t vote and Maurice Rigsby was absent.
The committee had decided at the April 3 meeting not to take any more discussion on the matter and only to vote Wednesday, but owners of both companies and their attorneys spoke during the public comment session at the start of the meeting.
Person’s attorney asserted that Heller Co. has never worked on a project as large as $5.5 million and that KAJACS has handled multiple projects that large or higher. Heller owner Lynn Heller said it’s not the dollar amount that matters, but management and employee qualifications. His attorney told the committee that Heller Co. has years of pipe-bursting experience whereas KAJACS had none.
At the close of Wednesday’s meeting, Block requested that wastewater attorney Carolyn Witherspoon and her firm - Cross,Gunter, Witherspoon & Galchus - provide training for the utility’s employees on the Freedom of Information Act and the rules stated in that statute, which public agencies are required to follow.
“We all know we are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. It might benefit staff if there’s an instruction training course on FOIA,” Block said.
She didn’t say why she made the request, but a subcommittee was criticized last week when it allowed a search firm consultant to give her report in a private session. Only members of a governing body, the head of an agency, any employee being discussed and his immediate supervisor, and applicants being interviewed for an agency’s top position are allowed in executive sessions, according to the Freedom of Information Act.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette objected to the consultant’s presence in the closed meeting last week, but another wastewater attorney, Amber Bagley, who is from the same law firm as Witherspoon, advised the subcommittee’s members that they could allow the consultant to give her report in private.
After reading the newspaper’s article about that meeting, Little Rock’s mayor and city attorney both said the consultant’s participation in the executive session was improper. Bagley has not returned several phone calls and email messages seeking comment.
Hornibrook, who heads the subcommittee, gave a report to the full committee Wednesday about last week’s meeting, but didn’t mention the dispute. The subcommittee voted to bring in five applicants for the utility’s chief-executive position to interview next month. As a result of the outcry over the closed session, Perryman plans to reconvene the meeting at that time.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/17/2014