The two percent advantage

The public works advisory board proposed an ordinance giving local contractors a two percent advantage over out of town bidders on City contracts. This is a bad deal on many levels.
1. Passing an ordinance that forces the city to spend more money at a time when we are budgeting paperclips.

2. At least some local contractors are against said ordinance. They want an even field. They get their advantage on local jobs by saving on mobilization.

3. Ordinance will discourage out of town contractors from bidding jobs. It takes a lot of time and money to prepare a bid and when coming in at a 2% disadvantage, they are liable to not bid at all. Even though they may have beaten the locals by 10%. We would never know the true cost of this.

4. Local contractors may pad their bid. They know they have a 2% advantage and may inflate their bid knowing if they are less then 2%, they are actually leaving money on the table.

5. If out of town contractors don’t pull plans because they can’t/won’t compete with this disadvantage, local contractors may inflate their bids when they see they don’t have any competition.

6. Could actually put local contractors at a disadvantage when bidding out of town jobs. When they bid in another contractors home town, the competing contractor may bid extra hard to keep them out since they have an advantage here.

After making these points to the City Council tonight, they withdrew the motion from the agenda. The two percent advantage is off the table for now.

The council showed they are willing to listen to their constituents and should be commended on this. I think this proposal was a very bad idea and the City is better off without it.