Miami-Dade Commissioners will consider on Tuesday approving an $7.8-million contract that was already awarded, and for which work has already started, to you guessed it, Magnum Construction Management — which is the same post-bridge collapse Munilla Construction company under a different name — to build a new county fire station in Sweetwater.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava (or, rather, someone in her office) awarded the contract for construction of Dolphin Fire Station No. 68 — a brand new, 13,000-square-foot, single story, three-bay station on 1.6 acres of land at 11091 NW 17th St. — in September. That’s five months ago.
So… ¿prefieren pedir perdón que pedir permiso?
La Alcaldesa was within her rights to award the contract under the county’s Economic Stimulus Plan Ordinance, according to the agenda item. It is intended to “provide an expedited process to award certain contracts with the express purpose of stimulating the local economy… without need for prior board approval but subject to ratification.”
Like, what’s the point? I mean, what can the commission say now?
Read related: Extension of MCM’s $120 million airport contract to get another look
Commission Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz is not going to have an issue. He wants to run for mayor in Sweetwater after he is termed out at the county next year. Bringing a fire station to the city makes for great mailers.
And he was there for the groundbreaking in August, standing in the woefully overdone shovel pose next to DLC on one side and Sweetwater Mayor Orlando Lopez on the other.
In his memo to the commission, Chief Public Safety Officer J.D. Patterson says the fire station, which will service mostly industrial and commercial properties — especially the Dolphin Mall — will be the first county fire facility to use solar power through net metering, which is when one property produces enough solar energy to add to the grid for others.
But why MCM? According to the package presented to the commission Tuesday, the company has already gotten $240 million worth of contracts from the county in the 20-year period from 2001 to September of last year.
Many people thought the Munillas’ days at the public county trough were done. Not because MCM was one of the companies behind the deadly Florida International University’s pedestrian bridge collapse in 2018, which killed six people. But because their padrino mayor, Carlos Gimenez, was termed out and went to Congress.
The documents show the Munillas were the lowest of seven bidders, at $7.8 million — $7 million for the base bid and $800K for add-ons, like $200,000 for furnishings, fixtures and equipment and $31,200 to upgrade from a millwork kitchen to full stainless steel. The second lowest bid was $7.9 million from Burke Construction.
It was thisclose.
Will it go down without a fight? The last contract the company won was after a bid war that lasted several years.
Read related: MCM finally gets $70 million airport contract after long protested process
The county is known for its procurement issues and bid protests so much that there’s another item on the agenda that might be interesting: Commissioner Danielle Cohen-Higgins has sponsored an ordinance in the same agenda that would make it harder to file bid protests. It would authorize hearing examiners to determine, for every protest, if “the legal or factual grounds for the protest are frivolous.”
Funny how that sounds like it would only lead to more lawsuits.
The county’s current bid protest procedures provide no repercussions when disappointed bidders who appeal a particular procurement award lose what amounts to a bad faith protest, which commissioners are sure there are tons of. Protests cause delays, which cost the county money, Cohen Higgins said. Her ordinance, on first reading, would also establish fees to make up for the county’s costs in delays and legal hours.
Cohen Higgins says that if litigants have to pay fees and costs for frivolous lawsuits, bid protesters should have to pay the same fees and costs when they file frivolous appeals.
Of course she’s an attorney.
But this has just become a new revenue stream for the county. Because fees are obviously not going to discourage bid protests.
What’s a few thousand bucks when you stand to bill $8 million? And that’s before extensions and reallocations.
Miami-Dade awards MCM another multi-million contract, for fire station added by Ladra on
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