Staff Writer

The St. Cloud City Council decided to buy 10 police vehicles from the local Poffenbaugh Ford dealership Thursday after discussing potential flaws in the new policy that gives local vendors preference in the city’s purchase of goods and services.

The $229,614 purchase of eight 2010 Ford Crown Victoria cars and two 2010 Ford F-150 pickups went to the St. Cloud dealership despite the fact that it wasn’t the lowest bid. Staff initially recommended the council purchase the vehicles from Bartow Ford Company, which made the lowest bid.

“I really have a problem with us purchasing out of our area, especially to another county,” said Councilwoman Mickey Hopper, who brought up the item for discussion, but she was not alone in her opposition to it.

Hopper proposed the council just award the purchase to Poffenbaugh, a decision the council couldn’t make on a whim, City Attorney Dan Mantzaris told her.

“You can’t simply just walk away from the fact that they’re the lowest bidder,” Mantzaris said. “It’s going to be problematic to simply just say, ‘We’re not going to give it to Bartow Ford and we want to give it to another vendor.’”

As the local vendor and the second lowest bidder, Poffenbaugh Ford was given the option of meeting the lowest bid, per city policy. However, the dealership was only given about 24 hours to respond, instead of three business days, as the ordinance requires. Only through that oversight were the council members able to award the purchase to Poffenbaugh.

Dealership owner Jim Poffenbaugh said he received the letter offering him the option of meeting the lowest bid as the preferred local vendor at 4:14 p.m. April 26. The letter stated he had to accept the offer by the next day at 5 p.m., which was “entirely too short of a time,” Poffenbaugh said.

Mantzaris said the miscommunication gave the council the opportunity to accept Poffenbaugh as the local vendor.

Poffenbaugh said he would accept the lower bid even though he initially had bid at no profit.

“I will take the loss to keep the business local,” he said.

He also said he took issue with the fact that Bartow Ford received a $300 per vehicle incentive from Florida as a state contract dealer. Poffenbaugh didn’t have access to that incentive, which totaled $3,000 for all 10 vehicles and made the difference between Bartow Ford’s bid and his bid, only $2,815 higher.

“I hope you will address a local vendor option ordinance,” Poffenbaugh said. “I think you ought to look at that policy and find a better way of making it more friendly to your local vendors, especially in these times when the economy’s tough.”

Councilman Jay Polachek agreed with the sentiment.

“When we wrote our local vendor policy, we never took into account incentives that some larger companies get that some of the smaller ones don’t,” he said. “Are we 100 percent confident that all of these bids were bid apples to apples?”

The council established a local vendor policy in an ordinance that became effective in April of last year. So far, Thursday’s purchase is only the second time the council has used the new policy. In August, the city awarded the construction of the St. Cloud police training facility to St. Cloud-based, ARNCO Construction, which was the second lowest bidder, but agreed to complete the project for low bid of $405,900.

The ordinance states that local vendors that come in as the second lowest bid, and are within 4.5 percent of the lowest bid made during the process, should be given the option of accepting the city contract at that lowest price.

Councilman Jarom Fertic said that Poffenbaugh Ford should be given the contract for other considerations, including the fact that the police department often borrows cars from the local dealership to use in undercover work.

Mayor Donna Hart took issue with that reasoning.

“We have to follow the law. We can’t allow ourselves to be above the law that we made, and we made it,” she said, pointing out that the council considered following the county’s more local vendor-friendly ordinance, but decided against it.

“We didn’t want to do that because we didn’t want the city to pay possibly more for the same service as someone else might give us for less,” she said.

All four council members attending agreed to accept Poffenbaugh as the local vendor for the purchase. The council might discuss tweaking the local vendor policy in a workshop.