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"and offered to perform the contract in the shortest span of time the City was legally required
<br /> to award the stormwater improvement to Solo. The City's attempts to award the stormwater
<br /> improvement contract to United as the most responsible bidder is inconsistent with the
<br /> requirements of the City Code." What we are doing is, when we say lowest responsible
<br /> bidder as opposed to the under$25,000 language that says lowest most responsible bidder is
<br /> your only quantifying one aspect and that is low, once you are the lowest, that is it, the City
<br /> has no authority, so long as you are one of the responsible and responsive bidders which he
<br /> believes there shouldn't be any question of, the same exact proposition is universally applied.
<br /> Mr. De Armas said that he has for the court, Boeing Engineering Corporation which addresses
<br /> the same issue, of Indiana, and in that case we had the same thing, we had a bid, a request
<br /> for proposals that was to be awarded to the lowest responsible responsive bidder, the
<br /> municipality there acted as if they were awarding to the lowest more or most responsible
<br /> bidder and the court said you can't do that, there is a difference between lowest responsible
<br /> bidder and lowest most responsible bidder.
<br /> Ms. Dickens said then, are you saying then that when the City awards a construction contract
<br /> that the only consideration that the City can make is the price? Mr. De Armas said no, the
<br /> City determines whether bidders are qualified or not, and that it has an obligation to do, and
<br /> there is a set criteria that they use to determine whether somebody is responsive and
<br /> responsible or not. Ms. Dickens said then, assuming that people are not disqualified, bids
<br /> come in, some are thrown out they didn't meet the requirements, they are disqualified, not
<br /> those, let's assume that the City have gotten a list of contractors that are qualified to do the
<br /> work, and so then they go to the next step, are you then saying that out of that group of those
<br /> contractors that are qualified to do the work, the City is then legally required to take the lowest
<br /> bid and are not to consider any other factors. Mr. De Armas said absolutely, when it says
<br /> lowest responsible bid, that is exactly what it means. Once these bidders are found to be
<br /> responsible and response you do not quantify more responsible or less responsible, they are
<br /> all responsible, now you go to one criteria, lowest bid, and that is exactly what this court in
<br /> Indiana said as well, "The Board may not make comparisons of bidders to determine
<br /> responsibleness, responsibleness is a minimal requirement of bidders, not a competitive
<br /> standard among bidders. A bidder can be un-responsible only if the awarding body would not
<br /> award the contract to the bidder even if that bidder had submitted the only bid. The absence
<br /> of the term best, or most responsible unmistakenably demonstrates the legislature did not
<br /> intend responsibleness to become a competitive factor between bidders, but rather the
<br /> legislator intended to give the Board the discretion to reject bids from contractors who are
<br /> unable to perform the work satisfactory they have awarded the contract. The Board may not
<br /> award the contract to Boeing simply because the subjective factors met materially in favor of
<br /> Boeing. Whether Boeing is more responsible than WPM is irrelevant when determining
<br /> whether WPM is the lowest responsible and responsive bidder.
<br /> Ms. Dickens said she sees the law is that there are two governing principals as it relates to
<br /> awarding contracts in the State of Florida for municipalities, you have the State Statutes, and
<br /> you have your local ordinance, and in the absence of a local ordinance, youlrely on the State
<br /> Statute, however, if you have a local ordinance then that, unless it is contradictory to what the
<br /> State law says, controls. Mr. De Armas said he agrees, and Ms. Dickens said with that being
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