Committee declines to award M Street outfall engineering after members cite noncomparable proposals

The Brainerd City Safety and Public Works Committee did not approve awarding the M Street outfall engineering contract after members raised concerns that the two proposals received were not directly comparable.

Staff described the project as extending a storm drain closer to the river to stop ongoing erosion and said the city is coordinating with the Mississippi River coalition at the Department of Natural Resources to ensure compliance. The staff recommendation named WSB at approximately $29,700, according to discussion.

Several councilmembers said the proposals differed in how they priced tasks, making side-by-side comparison difficult. One councilmember pointed to permitting fees listed at about $2,700 in one proposal versus roughly $5,000 in the other and noted that one firm included fence work as part of its proposal while the other treated fence work as an additional scope item. "There's just way too much ambiguity... I would feel much better about this if we could go back... and ask them to just kind of bridal it down in some type of a format where we can compare the two against each other in an apples to apples...," a councilmember said.

A motion to accept the staff recommendation and award the contract to WSB was moved and seconded for discussion; the motion failed. Members directed staff to draft a standardized scoping template or breakout (task list/divisional breakdown) for future RFPs so proposals can be compared more directly. Staff said it will return to the committee with recommended template language and options.