Typically when seeking bids for equipment, vendors’ bids are in the same ball park.
Not so with Iola’s attempts to purchase a new 1,200-amp breaker for its Oak Street substation.
City Council members approved Monday a bid from KMEA/Mid-States out of Salina, for $40,625.
That cost is comparable to the 18 or so breakers the city has purchased over the past 15 years, electric plant superintendent Mike Phillips told the Council.
It was the two losing bids that caught the Council’s eye.
A bid from N&M Power came in at $136,750; a third from MP Predictive Technologies, Inc. of Orlando, Fla, for $278,656.79.
Phillips was uncertain why there was such a jaw-dropping discrepancy.
“I don’t know if Mid-States just buys that many,” he said.
Regardless, Council members were happy to go with the low bid, with a 7-0 vote. (Councilman Nickolas Kinder was absent.)
The new breaker will improve the reliability of one of the substation’s circuits, Phillips explained. “It will be a good asset,” he said.
IN OTHER business, Council members approved the purchase of a hydro vacuum excavation machine from Vermeer Great Plains of Goddard, for $46,486.50.
The machine will greatly enhance the city’s ability to get to underground utilities without having to dig with a traditional excavator or backhoe, gas, water and wastewater superintendent Mitch Phillips said.
The machine injects a high-power water spray into the ground, and immediately vacuums out the debris.
With the influx of buried cables, “it’s almost impossible to ‘old-school’ it,” he said. “We can start tearing stuff up left and right if we’re not careful. We’ll have 101 uses for it. We probably should have had it five years ago.”
The bid for the machine came via a contract with Sourcewell, a purchasing agent that acts on a municipality’s behalf in order to secure the lowest bid.
