Albuquerque firm wins two McKinley contracts

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Local contractor Rick Murphy went to the McKinley County Commission Tuesday hoping to get a local stimulus package approved.

Instead, the commission voted 2-0 to give two major construction projects of more than $5 million each to the Jaynes Corporation of Albuquerque. The projects were for the new city/county police station and the new juvenile detention center.

The Jaynes Corp. won both projects after a review committee awarded the company the most points during an evaluation of all the companies that submitted proposals.

For the law enforcement building, Jaynes ended up with 851 — out of a possible 1000 — points, and Murphy Builders ended up in second place with 788. On the juvenile detention center project — for which Murphy did not submit a proposal — Jaynes came in first with a score of 878 to 758 to Arviso/Oakland, another local company.

Murphy argued that with the economy the way it was, the commission had an obligation to keep the projects local.

He also questioned the review given to Jaynes, indicating that he felt Jaynes won because they submitted a lower bid for the project based on what he though may be unqualified subcontractors.

But County Manager Tom Trujillo said there was nothing the county could do since Jaynes’ proposal received the highest score. The county would be violating state law if it rejected Jaynes’ proposal and gave it to Murphy just because he was a local contractor.

This is no different, county officials added, that another proposal that went before the county commission for a new van for the county’s senior citizen center. Bob Turner Ford in Albuquerque submitted a bid that was $200 lower than the one submitted by Gurley Motors of Gallup, but while the county would like to see the bid go to a Gallup firm, there was nothing they could do about it.

Trujillo said the Jaynes proposal for the juvenile detention center came to $5.2 million. The one for the police center was at $5.7 million.

Murphy said both of these amounts were not what Jaynes first proposed but were arrived at through negotiation, which the county could just as easily done with Murphy Builders.

“It is in the best interests of the county that the project go to a local company,” Murphy said.

Although many of the subcontractors that will be used by Jaynes are based in Gallup and the company will pay county gross receipt taxes, Murphy pointed out that many of the high-priced salaries will be going to people who live in Albuquerque and will only be making one or two trips to Gallup.

By giving the project to a local company, the county would be allowing the money to circulate several times within the city, thus benefiting Gallup more. Also, having a local company do the project would make it easier and a lot quicker to get things corrected that show up after the project is completed.

County officials, however, were firm on their position that there was nothing they could do since Jaynes came in first in the process.

At one point during the proceedings, Murphy and Trujillo got in a debate over what the Murphy could do when he got a chance to see Jaynes’ proposal on Wednesday and discovered something that he felt needed to be brought to the county’s attention.

That won’t happen, said Trujillo, because the committee looked at all aspects of the proposal before arriving at their recommendation.

“But what if I wanted to bring something up?” Murphy said.

“But there is nothing to bring up,” Trujillo said.

This went back and forth several times and in the end, Murphy said he still didn’t know what the procedure was if he wanted to file a complaint after seeing Jaynes’ proposal.

In the end, county commissioners Billy Moore, who voted through a telephone conference call, and Ernest Becenti Jr. voted to go along with the recommendation made by county officials to give the project to Jaynes. County Commissioner Dave Dallago said he would not vote or be part of the discussion since his company — Dallago Corp.— was one of the subcontractors that had submitted bids along with several of the contractors who had bid.