UNCUS reports that only 2 of the 7 contracts for the Downtown Mall Renovation had been given to local firms. I prefer shopping at local businesses and supporting local food, but the “local is better than anything else” mentality in the article strikes me as sensationalist and naive.
To be fair, there is probably some difference (let’s say local people do it for 10% more ) where it makes sense to favor local work. Take this passage from the article by Dave McNair:
As Jennifer Luchard, the city’s Procurement & Risk Management Services Manager, explains, “A preference for local products and firms in the case of a tie bid is allowed. Otherwise, there isn’t enabling legislation which allows a local preference.”
The city must also answer to tax payers.
“Obviously, those who have expressed concern about the Mall project’s price-tag will not be happy if we find a way to avoid automatically awarding such projects to the lowest qualified bidder,” says Norris.
But Norris is clearly on Marshall’s side. “…but to me there is a value in contracting locally that should be factored in to [procurement] decisions,” he says “I’m not convinced we have done enough within the constraints of the process to give as many advantages as we can to locally-owned businesses.”
Sure, legislation doesn’t exist to favor local contracts and it never will, but that’s not the reason that local contractors don’t win.
Of course there is value in contracting locally, but the article highlights the difference between a local contractor paying local workers at $15 to $30 per hour and that same local contractor saying that competition pays out-of-town workers $8 per hour. Not to sound all journalistic or anything, but shouldn’t we take a losing contractor’s thoughts on competition as somewhat biased? It seems to me as though the portrayal of local vs non-local is a bit silly in this article. There are probably a whole lot of costs that a non-local contractor has to support, such as hotels, time away from home, additional travel, etc., that actually significantly favor local contractors.
That being said, I do think it’s healthy to favor local anything over non-local, but we have to be realistic about some products and services not being cost effective on a local level. Agree or disagree?
Related posts:
- Letter from Disgruntled Downtown Mall Businesses
- Downtown Mall Renovation Epic: War of the Bricks (Ch. 1)
- City Says Downtown Mall Rebricking on Schedule
Luchard’s point gets at the fact that there are also state and federal laws that only allow preference for local bidders in cases where the bids are essentially equal. Otherwise, where the bidding company is based isn’t permitted to be a factor. That is, the city couldn’t simply decide that they were going to use local firms and then choose from amongst them.
Also from Dave McNair’s article:
I guess the thing here is that it’d be great to be able to use local firms and it seems that the city gets that. But there have to be local firms that can do the job and they have to bid at least equivalently to out of town firms. Then the city can choose them (and it seems, would). Otherwise, they have to go with the less expensive option for the same work.
Does anyone know for certain whether all firms contracting with the city have to pay a living wage (as defined by the city)? I believe that they do and that it’s something like $11 an hour. I find it hard to believe that with unemployment being what it is a construction firm would have to pay $30 an hour to keep someone right now.
Does anyone know whether the out of town firms are hiring local workers to do the work? It would seem odd to me that they’d truck in that many people (though I suppose it’s plausible, especially with jobs being more scarce than they used to be). I really don’t know whether the non-local firms are hiring local workers at all…I’m curious about it, though.
No big deal. CVillain apparently outsources spellchecking.
@2 The Librarian…..now they’ll change it and people will read your comment and go ‘WTF is that idiot rambling on about?’
All grammar/spelling must be backed up with a blockquote to ensure you don’t end up looking like a twat. Here, just this once I’ll help you out….
See? Preserved for posterity, unless Thor #718 goes into my post and changes that as well, which would lead us to believe he reads “Goat Fanciers Monthly” with a box of Kleenex within easy reach.
It’s obscene that they don’t round up all the mall-vagrants and homeless, and offer to let them work on this civic improvement project for a little cash, on a day-hire arrangement (worker’s in the Lord’s vineyard hired only by the day…) where they could just show up in the morning like dock-workers of yore and work thus only when they chose and were able.
I note also from Cville (DAMN PRINT MEDIA) that there’ll be a hundred or so Halsey Minor construction workers out of a job for a few months, each i’m sure qualified to drop a brick on sand.
workers.
I thought this article was just going to talk about how the city was only going to employ Mexicans.