The bids dealt with removal and disposal of material from what is left to be picked up along road side right of ways, and from the Rogers Group rock quarry at Hillsdale that has been used to store and sort the debris already removed from city, county and state right of ways.
With four dissenting votes (Hesson, Driver, Gammons and Ray) the commissioners accepted the low bid submitted by Asplundh Environmental Services, a Pennsylvania company with a subsidiary in Fairhope, Alabama.
While the final dollar amount may differ from those appearing on the bid proposal schedules, Asplundh's per cubic yard and per item schedule total was $154,700 lower than the next lowest bidder.
Linville said he had received seven bids from licensed and bonded contractors, and presented the four most reasonable ones to commissioners for their consideration.
None of the bidders were give specific amounts on which to bid; only a proposal schedule listing unit price for per cubic yard, or per item for removal of burnable debris, landfill debris that must still be collected from roadsides, and the piles of debris that must be removed or demolished at the rock quarry.
After the commissioners awarded the contract to Asplundh, local contractor Bobby Ward protested that in awarding the contract to the large, out of state contractor was unfair, in that amounts of debris had not been a part of the bidding process. Those estimated amounts (added by the mayor's office) were added to each proposal schedule to arrive at the dollar amount of each bid.
Ward sent a letter of protest to the county mayor on Tuesday morning, and met with the mayor on Tuesday morning.
Mayor Linville said early Tuesday afternoon the awarding of the debris removal contract was fair and a “done deal,” and that it would not be brought back before the commissioners again.
The Ward Construction letter to Mayor Linville appears in full on page 3-A of this paper.
In addition to the bids for tornado debris removal, the commissioners were presented with one contract to recycle metal that has been separated and can be recycled from the rock quarry storage site. Solid Waste director Debbie Richardson Harper had received three written and verbal proposals but these did not include loading of the metal.
The official bids were to include transportation, loading, sorting and weight tickets. Only one such bid was received, from Cooper Recycling of Livingston TN in the amount of $7 per 100 pounds, or $140 per ton.
The commissioners decided to accept Cooper's proposal, with the revenue to go toward paying the county's share of 12.5 percent of the total cost of storm debris removal.
In other business Linville noted that the county had received a $1,000,027 grant from the USDA to pay for the clean up of six miles of creeks and streams that are clogging the creek beds, and could cause flooding in bottom farm land, over bridges and roads if spring rains are heavy.
Bids will be let this coming Friday, and landowners who have not contacted the Soil Conservation Office and given permission for contractors to go onto their land to clear the creek beds of debris are urged to do so. For more information call the NRCS office at 666-4016.
In the first business of a long evening, commissioners heard a proposal from Frank Carcione of Correctional Risk Services, at the request of Sheriff Mark Gammons.
Carcione told commissioners that his company... offers claims filing services for the billing of local inmate medical services. The service evaluates bills similar to the way an insurance company does, and the only cost for their claims services is a percentage of the amount saved.
Correctional Risk Services is currently working with Trousdale and a number of other Tennessee counties.
The commissioners accepted the sheriff's request for letting the company file the local inmate medical claims, and said he would bring the company's insurance service proposal before the commissioners at budget preparation time at mid-summer.
The county commission will meet again on Monday night, April 7 at 7 p.m. in the county Courthouse in Lafayette.
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