Common Sense For New Hampshire

This time on the part of “Precise” Construction, apparently making a $104,000 miscalculation on the cost of digging some sand test pits.  Or maybe they actually miscalculated how much higher their competitors’ bids would be.  Anyway, the increase was allowed Wednesday night by a 3-2 vote with Bean and Magovern dissenting.  If you weren’t at the meeting, or haven’t yet watched it below, Kevin Penton’s story about it in the Asbury Park Press will fill in the details.

I think we should have re-bid the project and requested that the bidders refrain from the kind of pricing gimmicks that give us one company charging us $108,000 to dig 30 cubic yards of sand and another charging us 30 cents.  (A few years ago my kids would have been happy to do the job for free.)  We should have also looked into whether Precise should have had to forfeit it’s $20,000 performance bond.

The mayor contends that if re-bid, the prices would have still be around Precise’s amended $468,000 bid.  I disagree.  Precise, if they even still wanted the job, would have had to stick with that bid.  I can’t see them raising it again if they want to be taken seriously by us in the future.  So all the other bidders would have known that that was the price to beat.

And everyone that we do business with would have been given notice that Belmar is finally starting to be careful with it’s money.