City Council Awards Parks Landscape Contract

It's not unusual for the Moorpark City Council to go with the recommendations of City staff members when deciding on matters such as which contractor to hire for a given contract, as it did at Wednesday's Council meeting when it considered park maintenance bids. Usually, though, the vote is unanimous.

At Wednesday's meeting, however, after more than an hour of discussion, the Council split three to two on whether to accept the staff's advice to reject the lowest bidder—Allison's New Leaf (DBA Tri Valley Landscape), a Moorpark-based company—and instead accept a bid by Marina Landscape Services in the amount of $302,816.28 for fiscal year 2011/2012. Tri Valley's bid was for $301,176.

The City staff members felt Tri Valley failed to provide references that showed it has experience in performing similar services in terms of size and scope to those required by the contract and thus found the company to be unresponsive in its bidding.

Company owners Jennifer and Bill Allison addressed the Council in hopes their company wouldn't be summarily dismissed.

"One of our objectives for the company was to develop government contracts using our 40 plus years of experience coupled with Tri Valley's excellent reputation in landscape maintenance and landscape construction business segments," said Jennifer Allison before explaining that the company has or has had contracts with the U.S. Government, State of California—including work with the Department of Motor Vehicles, California Highway Patrol and CalTrans—and the cities of Camarillo, Torrance and Westlake Village.

"The landscape maintenance of parks is identical or very closely aligned with the work we currently perform for these government clients," Bill Allison told the Council when he took the floor.

While council members were appreciative of the company's experience and hopes to clarify its application, they also took staff's points into consideration.

City Manager Steve Kueny opined that while the government work Tri County has performed aligns with some City work, there was nothing to show the company had experience with public park lands that might have playgrounds with sand, restrooms and other developed areas.

"I don't think that there is a feeling from anyone on staff or anyone up here (Council members) that it's not a good company that can do great work," added Councilmember Roseann Mikos. "It's that they haven't done it, at least yet, for this type of situation."

Council members voiced concerns about changing procedures in the middle of the bidding process—which they'd be doing if they allowed Tri Valley to submit an updated application—and weighed that with the desire to hire an in-town company. The Council also discussed whether the qualifications required of applicants were appropriate.

In the end, Council members Mikos, David Pollock and Mark Van Dam voted with staff's recommendation and Council Member Keith Milhouse and Mayor Janice Parvin voted against.

The Council will consider making this a 12-month contract—originally it included an option to extend the contract to three years—so Tri Valley Maintenance and other companies can reapply next year. In the mean time, it will look into making changes to the contract application.