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Council affirms Fremont Avenue contract award after Gentry General’s bid is deemed nonresponsive
Summary
Montclair approved the Fremont Avenue improvement contract despite a protest from Gentry General, which argued the city’s bid form lacked a place to indicate partial subcontracting. Staff said listed subcontract items represented about 61.2% of the bid, making the bid nonresponsive; council approved the award 3–2.
Montclair — The City Council approved the Fremont Avenue improvement project contract after hearing a protest from Gentry General Engineering Incorporated. The contractor contended its bid was wrongly disqualified because the bid form did not provide a field to indicate that listed subcontractors would perform only part of certain line items.
Will Hernandez, speaking on behalf of Gentry General, said the firm retained control of materials and some project elements and that subcontractors such as Onyx Paving would supply labor and equipment rather than performing an entire bid item. Hernandez urged the city to reconsider the disqualification and to revise bid forms to avoid future confusion.
City staff including Rosemary Hornig and the city attorney explained that the bid documents and an addendum required bidders to indicate when only a portion of an item would be subcontracted; absent that detail, staff must treat the entire item as subcontracted. Using the bid worksheets the city received, staff calculated that subcontracted line items amounted to roughly 61.2% of the total bid, meaning the prime contractor would not be performing at least 50% of the work as required by the specifications.
Council members discussed fairness and procurement integrity. Some members expressed sympathy for Gentry, noting the firm’s prior work, while others said accepting supplemental information after bid submission would give an unfair advantage to one bidder. The council voted to proceed with staff’s recommendation and award the contract; the vote for the contract award recorded a 3–2 outcome on the consent-item separate vote.
Council and staff said the city will consider clarifying future bid forms to include explicit dollar or percentage fields for subcontract work so bidders can clearly show partial subcontracting and avoid similar disputes.
Actions and next steps: staff will finalize the contract award, and the city will review bid documentation and forms for future procurements to reduce ambiguity.
