TOWER— Representatives of two different ambulance manufacturers are raising questions over the process and lack of transparency surrounding the Tower Area Ambulance Service’s recent purchase of a new ambulance.

The city council here approved the purchase of the ambulance on Dec. 10, but documents and public comments from the city’s ambulance director indicate the decision had been made long before that official council action, in apparent violation of legal guidance provided to municipalities by the League of Minnesota Cities.

Under Minnesota law, any governmental body, including cities, must competitively bid any purchase of goods or equipment in excess of $175,000. The ambulance and an accompanying cot purchased in December, priced out at $243,993, which clearly required a competitive process.

But while the city did, ostensibly, put the ambulance purchase out for bid, it did so in such a way that it all but guaranteed the business would go to one particular manufacturer, known as Lifeline. Indeed, it appears the decision had already been made weeks before the purchase ever went to bid.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of that came from the mouth of TAAS director Steve Altenburg, who told the city council on Nov. 13 that he had “called around” to three vendors to get prices, including Lifeline, Braun, and McCoy-Miller, and found the prices all in the same range, at just under $250,000.

“I’m looking at going with the Lifeline one,” he told the council, without explaining his rationale.

According to the League, competitive bidding processes should be designed to “limit the discretion of contract-making officials in situations that are susceptible to fraud, favoritism, or other similar abuses.”

Mike Hornbostel, the North Central Sales Manager for Braun, said he’s grown increasingly disenchanted with the way some ambulance services disregard established bidding guidelines to direct business to favored vendors.

“It’s kind of an honor system,” said Hornbostel. “A lot of departments try to honor that and try to be fair. But some try to eliminate the other vendors.”

Usually, said Hornbostel, those departments that fall short are using specifications designed for a particular vendor, which makes it difficult for other companies to compete. But even at a time when the process used by many departments falls short, Tower’s case stood out, according to Hornbostel.

“I can say that it is unusual for a chief to announce prior to a bid that he’s going with a specific manufacturer,” he said.

Altenburg subsequently claimed that his comment to the council had been misquoted in the Timberjay. But the Timberjay, which records all Tower City Council meetings, provided council members with an excerpt of the recording, which shows the newspaper’s reporting of Altenburg’s comment was, in fact, word-for-word.

Indeed, Altenburg’s Nov. 13 comments to the city council strongly suggested that he had no plans to even use the formal competitive bidding process required by law given the dollar amount of the planned purchase. He told councilors at the time that he was finalizing the ambulance specifications and would be bringing back a “final contract” for their approval in the near future.

It was only after the Timberjay inquired about the lack of a public bidding process that city officials solicited bids in a process that was so rushed that two of the three vendors say it was difficult if not impossible to effectively respond to the city’s notice.

In the end, said Hornbostel, Braun never submitted a bid, and only in part because of Altenburg’s comments suggesting he had already made his decision to go with Lifeline. “They gave us like two days to put a quote together,” said Hornbostel. Given the complexity of designing an ambulance, Hornbostel said it takes his team a minimum of two weeks, and preferably three, to take a specification offered by an ambulance service and develop a design that meets the requirements of the bid. Only once the design is complete, can the company develop a reliable quote.

Altenburg provided notice to three ambulance vendors, Lifeline, McCoy-Miller, and Braun on the afternoon of Nov. 30. The notice required the companies to provide a sealed bid by 1 p.m. on Dec. 4, which would have realistically required the companies to have a bid prepared for overnight delivery no later than Dec. 2, just two days after Altenburg provided them notice.

“We were handcuffed to only have two days,” said Hornbostel.

The city did publish a bid notice in the Tower News, its official newspaper, on Nov. 23, which just met the ten-day public notice required in state statute, but none of the vendors contacted had been aware of the notice in the limited circulation newspaper. Typically, cities notify likely vendors for purchases like ambulances, since most manufacturers are located in other states and are unlikely to see a notice in a small local newspaper.

Mike Peck, of Fire Safety USA, a retailer of McCoy-Miller ambulances, said vendors rely on notification from the ambulance services since they can’t possibly scour the tens of thousands of newspapers around the country for bid notices.

Despite the short notice, Peck’s company did manage to get a bid put together, but only because he and one of his reps had visited with Altenburg in Tower months earlier, had gotten a pretty clear idea of what he was looking for, and had already made some progress on putting a quote together. He questioned whether any vendor that had not done that work ahead of time could have possibly responded. “We always like to have 30 days,” said Peck. “Most of the time, you at least get two weeks.”

Lifeline, on the other hand, did not face the same time limits that hobbled its two competitors, since the bid it submitted appears to have been created in October 2018 and was apparently submitted well in advance of the bid notice. While the pages on the McCoy-Miller submission are all date-stamped as Dec. 3, 2018, or one day prior to the bid opening, Lifeline’s submission, which also operates under the name 94 Services, is dated Oct. 16, 2018.

Not only does it appear that Lifeline’s quote was in well ahead of the others, it is apparent that the city’s specification was reproduced almost exactly from the one provided by Lifeline. That’s considered a significant flaw, based on guidance from the League. While the League acknowledges that vendors often assist municipalities in developing specifications, when they do so they should not be allowed to bid on a project like an ambulance purchase. “Otherwise, the vendor may have an unfair advantage when bidding on the contract,” notes the League in their official handbook for cities.

Hornbostel explained that some provisions in the spec that Altenburg provided to vendors are proprietary to Lifeline, which makes it difficult for another vendor to comply.

Peck said he doesn’t expect to win every bid, but he is troubled by the lack of transparency in the case of Tower.

In a March 4 email to TAAS director Steve Altenburg, the Timberjay outlined the concerns raised by vendors, asked several questions, and offered Mr. Altenburg the opportunity to explain his actions. He did not respond as of the Timberjay’s March 6 press time.