A construction company is crying foul over the Iola City Council’s decision to go with another bidder to handle a street extension project in north Iola.
Kent Wicker is president of Heck & Wicker, Inc. of Parsons, which was one of three bidders vying for the Cedarbrook Third Addition street extension project.
At their May 8 meeting, Council members voted unanimously to hire Mission Construction of St. Paul to handle the street extension at a cost of $1,370,255, or about $60,000 (4.5%) more than what Heck & Wicker bid.
The Council voted after Assistant City Administrator Corey Schinstock told them he favored Mission because of the company’s history of working with the city on other infrastructure projects, most recently installation of a pedestrian bridge near Iola Elementary School in February.
Schinstock told Council members that through conversations with the Kansas Department of Transportation representatives, he had learned that Heck & Wicker, which has been in business since 1968, had for years worked on other types of construction and had only recently begun focusing on such things as roads.
That perception is unfair, Wicker told the Register.
“We’ve been in business 51 years, and we have a stellar record of performance,” Wicker said. “We’re not late on projects, and we’ve never had a bonding company call. We have an excellent record of working with cities and the Department of Transportation.”
Wicker said competition for road construction bids in this part of the state is fierce, and that for years the lion’s share went to Mission and Beachner Construction.
With that in mind, Heck & Wicker “started chasing other work” across Kansas and Missouri, he said.
About six years ago, Heck & Wicker returned its focus to larger road projects in part to satisfy employees’ desires to work closer to home. Among Heck & Wicker’s 21 employees are five who live in or near Iola, he said.
In recent years, Heck & Wicker has completed infrastructure projects in Parsons, Pittsburg, Baxter Springs and Chetopa, as well as Crawford and Montgomery counties, with an ongoing hiking and biking trail project underway in Coffeyville and a grading and surfacing road project near Arma slated to start later this month.
Wicker said his company could easily have begun work in Iola by mid-summer, and ideally would have been finished by the end of the year, weather permitting.
“It’s almost unheard of, unless the contractor has a bad reputation, or worked with the city before, to not accept the low bid,” Wicker said, calling such practices “bid-rigging.”
However, the Council puts in its bid specs that the city reserves the right to reject any or all bids, Schinstock noted, if there are concerns about contractors meeting the city’s standards.
CITY COUNCIL members are extending streets and utilities into the undeveloped land which formerly held Cedarbrook Golf Course to entice new housing development. Work expected to begin by late summer.
