MANSFIELD — The Michigan company that submitted the lowest bid for the demolition and cleanup of former local Westinghouse properties submitted a letter Monday defending its offer for the project.
Arthur Dore, one of the owners of Dore & Associates from Bay City, Mich., said his firm offered to do the work for $2,786,000.
The Richland County Land Bank on Aug. 11 selected the $3,995,000 bid from R&D Excavating of Crestline.
The work was estimated to cost $4 million — $3 million of which will come through a state grant and $500,000 each from the City of Mansfield and Richland County via American Rescue Plan Act funds.
“The American Rescue Plan dollars does not specify that only local bidders could bid the project or be awarded the project, and although local preferences was not listed in the specification, we are still quite familiar with the concept,” Dore wrote.
“However, to award a contract for over a $1,200,000 difference in price to a local contractor with far less qualifications than the three national contractors who submitted lower bids is doing a great disservice to the taxpayers of Ohio, as the finished product, which will be a grassy parcel, will not be any different regardless of which firm completes the work,” Dore said.
It’s worth noting that the $1 million in local funds are the only ARPA funds in the project. The $3 million is from the state’s biennial budget approved in 2021 by state lawmakers as part of a $500 million statewide brownfield/demolition program.
Land Bank attorney Jon Burton said Tuesday he hasn’t seen the letter.
“As the board’s attorney, I would have to give my response to the board, not the media or the public,” he said. “I really can’t comment on the (specific case).
Burton said contractors not selected for projects do sometimes express displeasure after the process.
“It does happen,” he said. “There are issues that come up from time to time.”
A voice message seeking comment was left Tuesday morning for Richland County Treasurer Bart Hamilton, the chair of the Land Bank board.
The Dore & Associates letter was sent to the Land Bank, as well as city and county officials and local media outlets. It was also sent to the Ohio Dept. of Development, the agency overseeing the $3 million grant and which must approve the demolition contract.
Dore also defended elements of its bid that the Land Bank cited in choosing to award the bid to R&D, labeling them as “accusations and assumptions.”
The Land Bank executive board, for example, said Dore’s required bid bond was $2.3 million rather than the the bid amount of $2.78 million.
“In the attached copy of our bond, you can see that it is 10 percent of the bid amount with no cap or listed total, as directed in the specifications for this project; therefore, this statement is untrue,” Dore said in his letter.
The Michigan company owner also pushed back on the Land Bank’s claim that the company didn’t correctly figure the amount of asbestos remediation work that needed to be done.
In its analysis of the bid, the Land Bank executive committee found Dore’s bid was based on 24,7000 square feet of plaster, as opposed to the bid specification of 130,000 square feet.
The difference could have resulted in a $1 million change order once the work began, the executive committee said.
Dore, however, said his company’s bid was based on its own inspection of the building and that it would remove the material, regardless of the amount.
“We inspected the building and made calculated assumptions of the quantities for our bid, but did not qualify our bid; therefore, we owned removing all plaster in the building just as all the other bidders would have done,” he wrote.
“The question now becomes, if there is in fact less than the stated quantities of plaster in the building, will the awarded contractor be required to credit the County?” Dore asked.
“Furthermore, it was incorrectly stated that R & D Excavating was the only contractor to complete a project for the County, as we just finished a demolition project at the Richland County Court Building,” Dore said.
The company recently participated in the removal of cells from the former Richland County Jail, a $292,200 project,
“Governor De Wine stood on the steps on the building allocating $3 million dollars for this project, along with Richland County and the City of Mansfield contributing on top of that,” Dore wrote.
“Our bid, which we stand by, is the lowest bid; it saves the city, county, state and American Rescue Plan money that can be used for additional grants for other commercial and residential projects within the area and across the state,” he wrote.
“As a taxpayer, I am sure the people of Ohio would be happy to save money and see it used to beautify other areas of the city and/or county,” Dore wrote.
R&D was one of four bids below the $4 million available for the project. R&D was the only one of those four that’s from Ohio. Others were from Michigan, Illinois and Canada.
During the Land Bank meeting that included the bid selection, Burton said the executive committee identified flaws and/or concerns with the three other bids and then highlighted R&D’s proposal, which he said provided the “best and most responsive” bid.
One of the keys is the the fact R&D was the only Ohio contractor who submitted a proposal within the Land Bank’s price range.
Officials have said that the ODOD, while not ruling out non-Ohio contractors, prefer that state grant money be spent on “local” businesses.
“We don’t believe there’s an outright prohibition on using out-of-state contractors, but there requires additional hurdles and that the guidelines strongly favor, Ohio contractors,” Land Bank board member and Richland County Commissioner Tony Vero said during the meeting.
