Mount Vernon opens towing-service bids; several submissions missing required price or attachments

The Board of Estimate and Contract opened sealed bids for towing and impound services on April 15, 2025, and found multiple submissions missing required price-sheet entries or attachments, a procurement clerk said. The board did not award a contract at the meeting; staff forwarded the bid packages to the police department and appropriate city departments for review.

A clerk read the first submission as “F A Towing Inc., 656 Central Park Avenue, Suite 2, Yonkers, New York 10704,” and noted a check for $1,100 labeled as the bid deposit. The clerk said the bid deposit requirement is $100 and confirmed the form showed a $1,100 check. The bid’s price sheet did not include the annual compensation amount in the “A” line that is supposed to state the yearly fee to the City of Mount Vernon.

CityLine Auto Service Inc. (859 South Third, Mount Vernon) was read next. Its price sheet listed yearly compensation to Mount Vernon as $12,000 and included a deposit, the clerk said. J N R Auto Group Inc. (158 South Terrace Avenue, Mount Vernon) submitted a package that included insurance and a check the clerk identified as $7,000, but the bid form indicated price details were “see attached” and staff reported no attachment was present in the package provided to the board. Star Auto and Towing LLC’s price sheet indicated a $25,000 yearly compensation but staff observed no bid deposit or bond attached to that submission.

Board members and staff discussed that several packages had the non‑mandatory fields filled but left the primary price “A” line blank or indicated “see attached” without the attachment. A staff member said those omissions prevent straightforward tabulation of the annual compensation that the city requires to compare bids. The clerk told the board that items with missing information or missing bonds would be transmitted to the police department (which handles the towing contract) and the department would follow up.

The board recorded that it will not make awards at the bid opening. “Those will go to the department for them to re‑correct,” a board staff member said, and added that the department will notify bidders and provide next steps. The clerk also noted that the bid opening has been recorded and posted to the city’s Facebook page as part of the public record.

The board’s action at the meeting was procedural: accept the submitted packages and forward them to the purchasing authority and the police department for evaluation and determination of responsiveness. No motion to award a contract was taken at the April 15 meeting.

The record shows repeated instances of missing or incomplete price information and missing attachments across multiple submissions; procurement staff said they would follow up with bidders and the police department to resolve missing documents before the city evaluates the bids for award.

Ending: The city did not award towing services on April 15. Bids will be reviewed by the police department and procurement staff for compliance and completeness; the department will notify bidders when the evaluation and any award decision proceed.