The Kenner City Council on Thursday didn't take a vote to override Mayor Mike Yenni's veto of a $100,000 contract for PVC pipe, opting instead for putting the work out for bid again
In an apparent political compromise, the Kenner City Council on Thursday didn't take a vote to override Mayor Mike Yenni's veto of a $100,000 contract for PVC pipe. Instead, council members annulled last month's ordinance awarding the contract, and agreed with the administration to put the work out for bid again.
The procedural move let Yenni's veto stand, even though council members appeared to have enough votes to override it. They voted 7-0 last month to award the PVC contract; overriding Yenni's veto would have required two-thirds of the council, or five votes.
But the council also faced a potential problem if it had chosen to override the mayor's veto and stand by its previous decision. That could have left the council and the city exposed to a possible lawsuit from the firms that were not selected in the first bid. A state attorney general opinion on Wednesday said Yenni was right to veto the PVC contract, because the low bidder had failed to comply with a bid requirement.
The PVC contract is capped at $100,000, although Kenner in recent years has spent only about $6,000 annually on pipe, the city said.
Council members said the specifications for the bid were vague, and the administration indicated it is working to revise the specifications before the work is put out for bid again.
"We have asked, and we will continue to ask, that the specs be cleaned up," Councilman Keith Reynaud said.
Yenni thanked Raynaud for highlighting the problems. "We were both short of being right," Yenni said.
Three companies bid for the two-year contract to sell PVC pipe to the city, with CIMSCO Inc. of Metairie submitting the lowest bid. The administration threw out CIMSCO's bid, saying the offer included an escalation clause letting it raise its price, which according to the administration violated a bid specification requiring a firm price for the two years of the contract.
The mayor recommended awarding the work to the next-cheapest bidder, Quality Sitework Materials Inc. of Kenner. The council awarded the contract to CIMSCO on April 18. On a 7-0 vote Thursday, the council annulled that decision.
The veto is Yenni's second since he took office. In 2011, he vetoed an ordinance barring political appointees from political activity. The council overrode that veto, but suspended enforcement of the ordinance. The issue was later put on the ballot as a charter amendment, which voters approved last year.
In other matters, the Kenner council also:
- Adopted new rules for Kenner taxicabs, mirroring many of the requirements New Orleans and Louis Armstrong International Airport adopted last year.
- Accepted a $288,415 bid from Task Force, LLC, to repair the Laketown Fishing Pier.
- Renamed Lions Field as Sal Plaia Field.
- Accepted a $42,000 bid from Audio Visual Imagineering to install a new spherical mirror projection system at the Kenner Planetarium.
- Accepted a bid from Lumber Products, Inc., to supply building materials, with a contract cap of $75,000 per year.
- Accepted a $53,954 bid from LAS Enterprises to install motorized roll down shutters at the Emergency Operations Center.