I had the opportunity to speak with a Westfield lumber yard owner and asked him if he won the bid to provide the supplies to construct the new gazebo on the green. You know what he said? There was no bid and the supplies are being bought from an out of town business. How is this possible? Wasn’t the mayor’s point in building this to use local workers (the voke kids) and local suppliers? How is it this long standing local lumber provider wasn’t even approached to bid on the supplies? The following response is from the City Purchaser’s office: Because of the nature of this project the City Purchasing Department and the Engineering office have deferred to the Vocational School Construction Shop as to who they wanted to use for the materials for the Pavilion Project. My office has guided the shop through the procurement process and has encouraged the use of local when appropriate. I would like to point out that the Office did a bid for the structural steel that was open to anyone to bid, the City only received one bid and that contract was awarded to Lucia Lumber. The bid that was done was bid #2447 available for bid on March 12th and closed on March 31st. We only had two companies request packages. Lucia was the only company that submitted the bid, that bid was worth $60,000. Again this was open to anyone to bid and was advertised in the Republican, in the Purchasing Department and on our website, as is required. In addition, the Pavilion Project has issued orders to two other local vendors, Western Mass Truss (from Westfield) and a manufacturer of the PVC materials (Kleer Lumber), and a bid for the doors and windows is coming out today and Hampton Door is one of the vendors we expect to bid. Our office and the vocational school have worked to include many local vendors in this project. Thank you for your time. I encourage anyone to speak to Mr. Falcetti. He has workd tirelessly to get this project up and running.
