Dear Editor,
Let’s take a look at why I suggested the Smokey Hills be contacted for asphalt work.
When the city did the work at the airport Smokey Hills’ bid was several hundred thousand less that Ventur,e so Smokey Hills got the job.
Then they sub-contracted Venture and Venture did the work.
We know that both made money and the city and the taxpayers saved money.
This time the city contacted Venture individually but not anyone else. The last project the city did they contacted Venture and Apac in Hays knowing full well that Apac does not bid on city jobs here.
City Engineer Robert Winiecke said that it was common for out-of-town companies not to bid here, and that is not true due to the fact that the airport job was bid by Smokey Hills.
When the city takes bids for anything but vehicles and asphalt paving, they seem to make sure they get out-of-town bids when they don’t need to, due to the number of contractors here who need the work.
We give the ball field lighting to an out-of-state contractor, the new air and heat at fire station one went to an out-of-town contractor, and when we did the tree clean up several years ago we had several locals bid but the contract went to a company from El Dorado.
Since we have only one local paving contractor we should solicit bids from Smokey Hills, but the city won’t do that.
I say let’s make the playing field equal. If we have several local companies we don’t need to go out of town for bids, but if we only have one local then we need to solicit bids from their competitors to make sure we are spending your tax dollars wisely.
Randy Myers,
Great Bend