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Council rejects all bids for 2025 street improvements after contractor's legal threat
Summary
Kenyon city council voted May 13 to reject all bids for the 2025 street utility improvements and restart the procurement after a low-bidder's lawyer said his client was the low responsive bidder and threatened litigation; council adopted the recommendation to reject and start over.
Kenyon — The City Council on May 13 voted to reject all bids for the 2025 street utility improvements and restart the procurement after a public bid protest and legal warning from a bidder’s attorney.
Aaron Dino, speaking for Icon LLC during the meeting’s public-comment period, said Icon submitted the low bid by about $4,300 and challenged the city engineer’s responsiveness determination. Dino cited two statutes when urging the council to award to the low responsive bidder — “Minstat 412.311” and “471.345” — and told the council, “If you award BCM, I'm gonna sue the city and I'm gonna seek injunction.”
City engineering staff had recommended awarding the job to a bidder other than the attorney’s client based on their responsiveness analysis. After discussing the competing positions and legal risk, the city attorney recommended rejecting all bids and restarting the procurement process. The council adopted a motion to reject all bids and direct staff to begin a new solicitation; staff referenced resolution 2025-14 in the motion record.
Why it matters: rejecting the bids pauses the project timetable and will require staff to rebid the work, which could affect the bond and financing timeline discussed elsewhere in the meeting. Staff said the rebid will allow them to revisit specifications and timing before returning to the council.
What the council did: the council motion to reject all bids and start over was made, seconded and approved during the engineering portion of the agenda; no detailed roll-call tally for individual councilmembers was recorded in the transcript beyond the motion approval.
Next steps: Staff will return with a plan for a new solicitation and updated schedule for the project. The related assessment adoption item was tabled pending the procurement restart.
