Memorandum
Date: September 21, 2021
To: The Honorable Lake County Board of Supervisors
From: Lars Ewing, Public Services Director
Subject: A) Consideration to waive the formal bid process as the unique nature of the goods precludes competitive bidding and would produce no economic benefit to the County; and B) Consideration of Award for Trailer-Mounted Emergency Standby Generators
Executive Summary:
The County is the recipient of a $183,393 grant from the State Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) that must be used for the purchase of emergency power and/or emergency communications equipment. The County’s intent was to use the funding for the jail generator project. However, a significant constraint of the grant is that any work proposed for this grant must be completed and/or delivered by October 31, 2021. Consequently, once it was known that the jail generator project would not be installed prior to that date, the County Administrative Office requested that the Public Services Department scope facility needs and solicit bids for one or more trailer-mounted emergency standby generators, with primary focus being on a generator to support the new Registrar of Voters facility and a secondary focus of a generator that could serve a number of other County facilities during sustained power outages.
Public Services contacted nearly a dozen dealers across the country to assess the probability of procuring generators within the timeframe provided. Each dealer indicated that their inventory of new units was severely depleted, with lead times of 18 to 26 weeks to take delivery of new units, but that used generators were more obtainable. Additionally, the variety of facilities to which these generators might be dispatched necessitated scoping the equipment to allow for sizes ranging from 60KW (kilowatts) to 150KW.
As a result of the compressed timeframe, the extraordinarily low inventories, the lack of generator size uniformity among manufacturers, and to maximize the potential to use the generators for multiple facilities, staff tailored the solicitation to provide flexibility to choose generators that are sized so as to serve a broad range of County facilities, while also providing for consideration of units that provide the best value based on such factors as cost, guaranteed delivery date, optional equipment configurations, manufacturer’s reputation, maintenance staff’s familiarity with equipment, and the number of hours of prior use.
Staff solicited bids to generator dealers across the country. Bids were received from three dealers. Staff’s evaluation concluded that the bid from Leete Generators of Santa Rosa offers the best value to the County. It will provide two 100KW generators, plus on-site generator startup and commissioning and training, at a total price of $177,518.40.
Because of the unique circumstances described earlier, this approach did not rely solely on the lowest bid. Consequently, awarding this purchase order will require your Board to waive the formal bidding process by determining that competitive bidding is not in the public interest because the unique nature of the goods and because it would produce no economic benefit to the County.
If not budgeted, fill in the blanks below only:
Estimated Cost: ________ Amount Budgeted: ________ Additional Requested: ________ Future Annual Cost: ________
Consistency with Vision 2028 (check all that apply): ☐ Not applicable
☒ Well-being of Residents ☐ Public Safety ☒ Disaster Prevention, Preparedness, Recovery
☐ Economic Development ☐ Infrastructure ☐ County Workforce
☐ Community Collaboration ☐ Business Process Efficiency ☐ Clear Lake
Recommended Action: Staff recommends that the Board of Supervisors waive the formal bid process as the unique nature of the goods precludes competitive bidding and would produce no economic benefit to the County; and approve the purchase order to Leete Generators in the amount of $177,518.40 for Two Trailer-Mounted Emergency Standby Generators