Othello council rejects bids for Main Street crossings

OTHELLO — The Othello City Council has agreed to throw out all six of the bids for an upcoming safety project on Main Street, citing “irregularities” with the two lowest bidders.

During an online city council meeting Monday, council members instead decided to have another round of bidding for the project to install pedestrian crossing signals along Main Street at Fifth and Sixth avenues.

According to city engineer Shawn O’Brien, the two lowest bidders did not use the proper forms when submitting their bids.

The third lowest bid, however, did use the proper city form, but was over $40,000 higher than the lowest bid of roughly $666,000, O’Brien said.

The highest bid received was around $821,000, while according to city documents, the city engineer originally estimated the cost of the project at around $863,000.

Both O’Brien and city attorney Kelly Konkright said that because federal funds are involved in the project, the best thing to do is to start over to ensure the paperwork is correct and the cost is right.

“The cautious thing to do is to reject all the bids and let it out again,” Konkright said. “It’s a lot simpler and probably more efficient for the city to go through the bid process again.”

O’Brien said the city would put the bid out again as soon as possible, and would expect to award the contract for work on the two pedestrian crossings in January.

“I talked to the two lowest bidders, and they are all interested in rebidding the project,” he said.

Concerned that a second round of bidding might favor the already low bidder, council member Jon Erickson said he wanted to make sure all the region’s contractors know “they are welcome to bid.”

“We will get the word out,” O’Brien said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected]