Low bidder calls council decision unfair

BANGOR – The owner of a cleaning company passed over for a contract despite making the lowest-cost offer has asked the City Council to toss out its vote last week to award the contract to a rival company and begin the process from scratch, this time with sealed bids.

“I am a disgruntled, disillusioned contractor that feels like I was treated unfairly. I feel the vote should be thrown out,” Michael McCue, owner of CMC & Maintenance Inc. of Bangor, said last week. “That is what I’d like to see but I don’t know what their rules and [regulations] are around that. I spent a lot of time on this bid and I personally am very upset with this process.”

The council voted 5-4 to award the Bangor International Airport cleaning contract to River City Commercial Cleaning Inc., which has done the job for the last several years. McCue argued that two of the councilors who participated in the action should not have voted.

Councilors Dan Tremble and Susan Hawes, who were among the five councilors who voted to stay with the current company, both disclosed during a June 13 council meeting that they are clients of an accounting business also belonging to River City’s owner, Glenn Wilson.

After City Solicitor Norman Heitmann reviewed the city’s code of ethics, the other seven councilors determined that neither were in conflict and as such, must vote. Councilors are prohibited from recusing themselves from voting.

McCue also noted that his $675,402 proposal for a three-year contract was more than $10,000 a year lower than River City’s $708,344 offer, and that staff had done extensive reference checks and uncovered no problems with CMC’s work.

“It is [about] money and money is money,” Councilor Richard Stone said. He said, however, that he was not comfortable with taking a chance on a new contractor.

“The airport is the front door to thousands and thousands of people who come into the city,” he said.

Councilors John Cashwell and Geoffrey Gratwick favored going with the lower offer.

If staff had recommended the higher offer, Gratwick said, “We would be outraged. … I think we, as a council, have to adhere to a process” that usually favors the more competitive proposal.

Cashwell supported the low offer because there was “no demonstrable difference” between the companies’ work, though he said he understood “the inclination of councilors to support the status quo.”

When it came to a vote, however, Tremble, Hawes, Stone and Councilors Peter D’Errico and Richard Greene voted to stay with River City, while Cashwell, Gratwick, Chairman Frank Farrington and Councilor Annie Allen favored CMC.

A reversal appears unlikely. In a June 15 letter to McCue, Farrington wrote that the council had discussed the issue at length during last week’s council meeting, as well as during a finance committee meeting the week before.

“The council listened to the recommendations of our airport and purchasing staff. We heard from representatives of both companies under consideration,” he wrote. “While city staff has an important role in this process, their recommendations are advisory to the council, not binding on it, a reality that both council and staff recognize and support.

“Since this award proceeded under our request for proposal process (as opposed to through sealed bids), the ability to take into account factors other than price was recognized from the beginning. … While there was a difference of opinion among [council members], we all recognize that there were valid considerations and arguments on each side,” he wrote.

Noting that reconsideration would require that a special meeting be scheduled, Farrington concluded, “I do not intend to call such a meeting and do not believe that there is majority interest on the part of the council in doing so. Since receiving your letter, several councilors who voted in the minority on this issue have indicated that they accept the council’s decision and would vote to uphold it if necessary.”

McCue said last week he wasn’t sure what his next step, if any, will be.

“This contract has become a moral issue for me. This contract is not going to make or break my company. This is about what’s fair.”

Attorney Steve Lyman is representing him in the matter.