(a) In connection with the public bidding and contract awarding process for every proposed improvement to City real property, including, but not limited to, City buildings, streets, and rights of way, for which bidding is required by law, the Director authorized to let bids for said proposed improvement shall, prior to the letting of bids, establish criteria for evaluating bidder responsibility and shall require that all bidders provide information necessary to ascertain the pecuniary and financial responsibility, accountability, reliability, skill, capacity, judgment, and integrity of each bidder to do business in the City. In the event that any bidder fails to furnish the requested information and/or the information provided demonstrates a lack of responsibility, such bidder shall be disqualified and rejected as not a responsible bidder.
(b) The Director shall require each bidder to minimally furnish the following items:
(1) Description of its experience with projects of comparable size, complexity, and cost within recent years, demonstrating the contractor’s ability and capacity to perform a substantial portion of the project with its own forces;
(2) Documentation from previous projects regarding timeliness of performance, quality of work, extension requests, fines and penalties imposed and payment thereof, history of claims for extra work, contract defaults, together with explanations of same;
(3) Identification and description of any projects within the previous five years that the bidder was determined by a public entity not to be a responsible bidder, and the reasons given by the public entity, together with an explanation thereof;
(4) An adequate demonstration of financial responsibility, which may include in the Director’s discretion, a certified financial statement prepared by a certified public accountant, to assure that the bidder possess adequate resources and availability of credit and the means and ability to procure insurance and bonds required for the project;
(5) Disclosure of any suspension or revocation of any professional license of any director, officer, owner, or managerial employee of the bidder, to the extent that any work to be performed is within the field of such licensed profession;
(6) Disclosure of any and all OSHA violations within the previous three years, as well as all notices of OSHA citations filed against the bidder in the same three-year period, together with a description and explanation of remediation or other steps taken regarding such violations and notices of violation;
(7) Disclosure of any and all violations within the previous five years pertaining to unlawful intimidation or discrimination against any employee by reason of race, creed, color, disability, sex, or national origin and/or violations of an employee’s civil or labor rights or equal employment opportunities;
(8) Disclosure of any litigation (including copies of pleadings) in which the bidder has been named as a defendant or third party defendant in an action involving a claim for personal injury or wrongful death arising from performance of work related to any project in which it has been engaged within the previous five years;
(9) Disclosure of allegations of violations of the prevailing wage law and any other state or federal labor law, including, but not limited to, child labor violations, failure to pay wages, or unemployment insurance tax delinquencies or unfair labor practices within the past five years;
(10) Disclosure of violations of the Worker’s Compensation law;
(11) Disclosure of any criminal convictions or criminal indictments, involving the bidder, its officers, directors, owners and/or managerial employees, within the past five years;
(12) Disclosure of any violations within the past five years of pending charges concerning federal, state, or municipal environmental and/or health laws, codes, rules and/or regulations;
(13) Documentation of the bidder’s participation in and contributions to any bona fide apprenticeship program;
(14) Documentation that the bidder provides health insurance and pension benefits to its employees;
(15) Identification of whether the bidder’s workforce is drawn mainly from area residents;
(16) Identification of all work to be subcontracted. All subcontractors of bidders are also subject to the foregoing responsibility standards.
(17) Disclosure of every civil action, identified by case name, court name, case number, and date of filing, commenced by or against the bidder in any federal or state court within the last five (5) years;
(18) Disclosure of every demand for arbitration, identified by case name, arbitration agency, case number, and date of filing, commenced by or against the bidder within the last five (5) years; and
(19) Disclosure of every mechanic’s or other statutory lien, identified by the name of the lien claimant, the volume and page number of the recorded document, and date of filing, filed by the bidder or against an owner’s property or fund by any third party contractor, subcontractor, materialman, or laborer, as a result of that third party’s contractual relationship with the bidder in any court, recorder’s office or other government agency within the last five (5) years.
(c) In the event the amount of the lowest bid appears disproportionately low when compared with estimates undertaken by or on behalf of the City and/or compared to other bids submitted, the Director shall have the right to inquire further of the apparent lowest bidder to determine whether the bid contains mathematical errors, omissions and/or erroneous assumptions, and whether the apparent lowest bidder has the capability to perform and complete the contract for the bid amount.
(d) The Director shall make recommendations to the Board of Control with respect to the responsibility of every bidder whose bid is not otherwise disqualified or rejected. If the Director recommends that an apparent lowest bidder be disqualified or rejected for failure to meet the responsibility standards set forth in subsection (b) hereof, the City Board of Control shall notify said apparent lowest bidder of the same in writing, stating the responsibility standards which were not met by the bidder, and setting forth a time, date and place for the apparent lowest bidder to appear and be heard by the Board of Control, prior to a final determination being made regarding that bidder’s responsibility. The Board shall not award a contract involving any such apparent lowest bidder until after the bidder has been heard, or, after notice has been given, the bidder fails to appear or declines to be heard.
(Ord. 2004-57. Passed 4-20-04.)