Discrimination in city's bid for services

[mjenkinscne]

What is the name of your state?California

My company had expressed interest to the city manager and financial director in securing a contract to perform IT services for the small city I live in. My company is the only computer support business I know of here. I had provided many hours of volunteer work to the city as I assisted an associate of mine who was contracted to perform IT support with the city at the time. Following some disagreements between my associate and the city, the city breached their contract with him. Several months later when the city's financial director, in charge of securing contracts for this service, sent out RFQs to companies, he did not send one to my company, I assume because of my association with their old contract holder whom they had a disagreement with. I was in no way involved with any of the issues they had with him and I was never sub-contracted to perform any services. I was strictly there as a volunteer hoping to gain experience and get to know the department heads. The public posting of the city's RFQs, which is required per city ordinance never occured. By chance, I learned of the RFQs the evening before the deadline for submittal. I picked up a copy at city hall and asked that the financial director call me in the morning as he had already left for the day. When he called the next morning, I confirmed the deadline to be that same evening at 5:00pm OR the RFQ would need a postmark of that same day. I told him that I lacked sufficient time to create a comprehensive quote and therefore would not be submitting one.

I had been preparing a single 8.5 x 11, tri-folded color advertisement which I intended to mail out to 135 businesses in this town. Consequently, I had just finish preparing them and realized the possibility that the one addressed to city hall, might be mistaken (unbelievable as it sounds) as a formal qoute, so I waited until after midnight to drop them in the box at the local post office. This would insure that the postmark would be after the deadline for quotes. Two weeks later I see on the local TV broadcast of the city council meeting that my tri-folded flyer has been included with five actual formal quotes and because my flyer did not specifially address items requested in the city's RFQ, assumptions and conclusions were drawn about my company's capabilities and this false information was made public. I don't know if this was the cause but I did not receive one response from a single business who received one of my mail ads. My business was just starting and I got my business license in this town specifically with the intention doing business with city hall, in fact the financial director personally signed my license.

In my subsequent research I found the company which won the contract had submitted their quote via fax. Printed right in the fax header was the time and date when it was transmitted, four days after the deadline. No extension of the deadline was ever made. If the city would accept a quote four days after the deadline, then why didn't the financial director tell me that on the phone that day? And why did the financial director, who has extensive experience in the field, mistake an obvious mail advertisement for a formal quote? Or was that a mistake to begin with?

I have documented all of this and have filled out a Grand Jury complaint form, which I plan to submit shortly. Any ideas on what kind of liability the city faces regarding the mis-use of my advertisement? Discrimination? Racketeering?

 

[CdwJava]

Have you consulted an attorney?

I'm not an attorney but I do have knowledge of the city bid process, and I'm not sure you have any cause of action for what is likely an error. And what kind of things could the Council have POSSIBLY said that could have hurt your business? Since the only info they had was on your flier, that would give them sufficient cause to comment on the flier and the qualifications for the contract (since they apparently thought that this was somehow your quote).

Simply stating an opinion or a perceived/believed fact are generally not causes for action. Assumptions and inferences are generally perfectly okay. If they knowingly and maliciously made false statements about you and your business, then you MIGHT have some cause for action ... but you'd likely have to find someone who would have been inclined to contract with you save for the comments by the Council.

And to prove discrimination you would have to show that you were discriminated against based on one of a number of protected classes. Since you say you aren't a party to the RFQ, you may lack standing to challenge the results of the bids for any reason based on what you perceive to be a violation of the rules may give grounds to one of the other parties to contest it, but you might not be able to ... though you could certainly raise the issue before the Council. Besides, you don't really know if his bid came in on time or not. All because the faxed copy you saw was dated 4 days after the deadline does not mean that a copy had not been received on time. I can think of a number of valid reasons why the fax from the applicant was made 4 days late.

What exactly are you seeking from this? If you want the contract, then go to Council or the media and raise a stink about the bidding. If you want money for what you perceive as bad publicity based on the Council meeting, then you're probably out of luck. Besides, even in HUGE cities, the number of people that are watching these things on TV is likely fewer than in the graduating class of the local high school! The chances of anyone even hearing any mistaken impressions at the meeting are relatively remote, I would think.

- Carl

 

[Gadfly]

This is not a legal opinion, but business advice.

You did not get a RFQ. Are you on the City's bid list? If not, don't expect to see anything in the mail.

In the IT business most people don't respond to an advertisement unless they have a specific need. You only sent out 135 flyers not is not nearly enough to elicit any kind of a response.

If your flyer was the source of from which incorrect assumptions were drawn you need to rethink your flyer.

If you knew that the formal process was supposed to be through an RFQ and a bid, what where you expecting to accomplish by faxing a flyer after the closing date?

Finally, the time/date information in the fax header comes from the clock in the receiving fax, not from caller ID or anything like that. If you check the fax machines in an office you will find that 9 out of 10 of them are incorrect by huge amounts because most office people don't take the time to learn how to set it and screw it up when trying to do something else like set speed dials. What I'm trying to say here is you will need some kind of proof beyond the fax header to prove any case you try to build.

What you should do now is go down to the City, find out how their system really works, what you have to do to become an approved vendor and then build your business to the point where it is recognized as a reputable high quality business. I know from experience that no Elected Official who has been entrusted with the public's money is going to hire an unknown company to take care of its IT systems. . .unless of course that official does not wish to be re-elected.