BARRHEAD - The county of Barrhead has renewed its contract with Luke's Contract Hauling to do light maintenance and supervise their waste transfer stations.
Councillors approved a two-year contract with the local vendor at just over $4,000 a month, which includes supervision of the Take It or Leave site at the Dunstable transfer station starting Jan. 1, 2024. The existing agreement expired on Dec. 31.
County manager Debbie Oyarzun said the contract includes a five per cent bump, adding that Luke's Contract Hauling has held the contract since 2010.
She added that the county can terminate the contract without cause within the first 30 days or immediately if it is a performance issue.
It is the first increase since 2019.
Reeve Doug Drozd supported the renewal, saying the contractor has always fulfilled the agreement and the municipality was happy with the service.
Deputy reeve Marvin Schatz said the contractor has held the contract for the last 13 years.
"Don't you think at some time we should put it up for tender to see if anyone else is interested in it," he said.
Oyarzun responded she believed the municipality had put the contract up for tender again in the winter of 2019.
"He was the best pricing for it, and when he chose not to increase the rates in subsequent years, you cannot go wrong with that, especially when you have someone doing the job with no issue or concerns," she said. "The question is if the rate is reasonable and the company is doing a good job, do you want to take the chance of re-tendering it and have him and the other companies come in with higher bids? Even if someone was to come in with a lower bid, there is the unknown factor, and you don't know what kind of service you would be getting."
Schatz then asked if the province or the county had any policy or legislation that says we have to put it out to tender after a certain amount of time or dollar amount.
Oyarzun said the county doesn't have such a policy, adding that while the province does have a requirement under the New West Trade Partnership Trade Agreement that it has with B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba to put contracts of certain values to tender, the amount of this agreement falls well under that threshold.
"We are working on a project to package up all of our contracts and see what, if any, process we want to have [in terms of agreement renewals] and bring it to council to see if you want to put a policy in place," she said.
