By Richard Paquette
It was ironic to hear Mayor Brian Bigger and councillors Mike Jakubo, Rene Lapierre, Jocelyne Laundry-Altman and Mark Signoretti speak about integrity and fairness during the debate on the future of Animal Care and Control recently.
While it is true that Rainbow District Animal Control and Shelter Services sent communications to councillors in violation of the process, we had little choice as the city failed to conduct a fair process or act in good faith.
Staff not only grossly misrepresented the cost of our proposal, but also the history of those costs and of previous procurements, and what it will cost taxpayers for the city to provide this service in-house.
Greater Sudbury, despite being contacted through the proper channels on two separate occasions before RDACSS decided to blow the whistle, took no action to correct the errors that had overestimated RDACSS' price by more than $300,000 per year.
The proposal, which met all the requirements, should have been accepted had the city correctly calculated the estimates of both the proposal and what they should have expected according to their consultant.
While not required to do so, fairness would have included spending an hour negotiating with the lowest compliant bidder, or at least taking the time to clarify the pricing, before spending untold hours exploring the option to do this work on its own.
It is clear the city had no real interest in getting the best deal or executing a plan that made the most business sense. Why even bother putting this out for proposals if you were not willing to fairly evaluate them, conduct a fair process or act in good faith?
If the process was to be cancelled anyway, it is also not fair to rush to implement an alternative, especially when the finer details of that alternative were only released hours before the decision was to be made, not giving council or the public the opportunity to properly evaluate that alternative.
If the city has sent any message to potential bidders, it is that they are more than happy to waste your time and treat you with little respect. The message they have sent with all three of these procurements since 2014 is: Don't bother bidding, as we will just misrepresent your proposal, toss the results and put out an even more nonsensical request next time, or make up some numbers and opt to do the work ourselves.
Fairness in procurement is not only about fairly representing a bidder’s proposal -- something the city has now failed to do during three consecutive processes -- it is also about putting out requests that make sense.
For the third time in as many years, the City of Greater Sudbury issued an RFP that failed to meet that most basic standard.
The first proposal in 2014 demonstrated staff had little concept of the scope of the work they were asking parties to bid on and the second was no better.( https://www.sudbury.com/local-news/bid-prices-soars-for-revamped-animal-control-contract-250891) These requests flew in the face of many of the recommendations RDACSS had made to improve the delivery of service in the consultations leading up to when the tender was issued. Yet for some reason not only were city staff surprised when no one else bid on them and they were shocked the price to provide the service increased.
So, while I am sure staff -- and the councillors who went along with this charade -- feel like they have taught RDACSS a lesson, they didn’t. The real lesson learned is that doing business with the City of Greater Sudbury is a less than desirable experience, one we would not recommend to anyone.
We have learned that when staff makes a mistake, they will do everything in their power to cover up that mistake, regardless if the results are in the best interest of the city or not. The message the city has sent is that bidding on contracts is a futile and frustrating experience, as it doesn’t seem staff nor council is interested in conducting a fair process or acting in good faith.
Richard L. Paquette is the manager of the Rainbow District Animal Control and Shelter Services in Azilda.
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