Wawa Municipal Council's approved a recommendation to award the engineering contract for its "Connecting Link" project - despite concerns about the choice of contractor.
While a report from Infrastructure Services Director Cory Stainthorpe recommended awarding the contract to Kresin Engineering - based on a three-person staff review of five bids - Councillor Pat Tait and Mayor Ron Rody both raised concerns about the process used for determining that, particularly questioning how the bids were scored.
Stainthorpe cautioned against "playing around with the numbers" - suggesting it could lead to analyzing to select another company rather than assessing by score - though Tait openly questioned the choice of Kresin, saying it "has a lot on its plate with regard to this community" and suggesting it hasn't had "the best report card", especially as it was noted that Kresin is doing the arena's structural review, which is only scheduled for next week, despite being requested in May - something citizen Peter Moore suggested the Municipality might be able to use to "leverage" savings.
Mayor Rody acknowledged there have been issues with Kresin, but stated the Municipality doesn't know if there have been issues with the other bidders, though he did note it was "one of the closest competitions [he's] seen".
In the end, three of the four attending Council members voted to accept Stainthorpe's recommendation, with Tait the sole dissenting vote. (Councillor Bill Chiasson was absent)