Flin Flon city council is under constant pressure to deliver the biggest bang for the taxpayer buck.
This pressure serves property owners well. It ensures the guardians of our public coffers know that fiscal prudence is expected, that residents wish to uphold a level of affordability in our city.
But there are times when money isn’t everything.
Earlier this spring, the city began accepting bids from companies hoping to supply fuel to municipal operations for the new fiscal year.
For some reason, the city’s tender contradicted itself, stating the lowest bidder “will be the successful bidder” and that the “lowest or any tender not necessarily accepted.”
So which is it, the former statement or the latter? From a legal standpoint, the city believed itself to be tied to the former, meaning the company with the lowest bid would get the contract.
When it came time to select the successful bidder, council only narrowly followed the city’s own legal advice.
Three councillors dissented. Rather than awarding the tender to the out-of-town Prairie Fuel Advisors, they preferred to spend an extra $12,932 to go with the Co-op, the only local company in the mix.
“The fact that this was awarded to an out-of-town company when there is a local business with deep roots in Flin Flon [that also bid] is extremely disappointing to me,” said Coun. Tim Babcock, one of the dissenters. “We encourage people to shop locally and we should be doing the same whenever possible.”
“I understand that our job is to be cognizant of how we spend money. I get that,” added Coun. Colleen McKee. “But I also believe that we have a community that provides certain services that we need to support if we want to keep these services around.”
Babcock and McKee, along with fellow dissenter Coun. Guy Rideout, had it right. Money isn’t everything, at least when we’re talking about a miniscule variance in bids between local and non-local bidders.
Supporting local companies matters because they employ local people who shop in local stores and pay local taxes. They have local children who attend local schools. The list goes on.
Local businesses are the backbone of our community, collectively employing hundreds upon hundreds of residents. As long as a local bid on a city contract is not exorbitant, it deserves preferential treatment.
There is virtually no benefit to the city saving $12,932, or even double that amount, by going beyond Flin Flon’s borders to select successful bidders, as happened with the new fuel contract. No one’s taxes are going down even a penny as a result of that.
For these reasons, the city should never have signed off on a tender that guaranteed a contract to the low bidder. It was a mistake that may not have been exposed if not for the three dissenting councillors.
City hall has recognized the error in its ways and now plans to remove the low-bid guarantee from future tenders.
Thankfully, council has moved past a money-is-everything mentality that manifested itself not only in this latest episode, but also in a controversial 2004 decision that saw a fuel contract renewed without going to tender. The reason? The price offered was “excellent.”
Residents need to maintain the pressure on council to deliver the greatest value for our money, but the rule is not absolute.
Indeed, one could argue that spending a bit more on a local company, if needed, delivers the biggest bang of all.
