County releases Village maintenance request

Merchants in Siesta Key Village may soon get a whiff of fresh cut grass as Sarasota County accelerates the search for a contractor to undertake Village maintenance. Nearly nine months after JWM Management let its contract expire and refused to bid on renewal, Sarasota County has submitted a new request for proposal for a one-year agreement with a firm to oversee Village upkeep.

The solicitation went out Friday, June 1, on the county’s new electronic procurement system, eProcure, and 14 firms have already downloaded required documentation regarding contract-bidding procedure. (See below.)

The county, in proposals on eProcure, specifies what type of work is expected and some guidelines for time frames on material delivery or maintenance. The solicitation package for Siesta Key Village maintenance is 82 pages long. Of the 16 active proposals on the county’s procurement website, the shortest contract request is 17 pages in length and the longest is the 466-page request for a proposal for a chiller plant at Phillippi Estate Central Park.

The Village maintenance request indicates that the Siesta Key Village Maintenance Corp. will oversee the work performed by the winning bidder. The Village organization, headed by Siesta architect Mark Smith, has been performing maintenance of the commercial district following the expiration of JWM’s contract.

Smith, at the Siesta Key Village Association monthly meeting Tuesday, June 5, said SKVMC has not been reimbursed the nearly $2,000 owed by the county for maintenance costs, and the pressure washing promised by the county earlier this year has not been performed.

“Knowing that the county does everything in the right and proper manner, there are no worries,” he sarcastically said.

The contract requires weekly weeding, monthly inspections of the sprinkler systems, repair and replacement of decorative items such as lamps and signs, and clean up of litter and graffiti. The document also includes annual pressure washing and up to $3,000 worth of maintenance work not specified in the proposal that could be added by SKVMC. However, as of the SKVA meeting, Smith had not seen the document. (See below.)

Mike Wilhelm, owner of Wilhelm Brothers Inc., downloaded the documents the morning they were released and plans to read them over to determine if his commercial landscaping firm could handle the work. A similar request for proposal was put out for the downtown improvement two years ago, but Wilhelm Brothers did not have the scope to take it on at that time, he explained.

“It’s a fairly wide-ranging contract in terms of scope,” Wilhelm said of the RFP for Village maintenance. “It’s fairly intensive.”

There will be a mandatory pre-bid meeting of interested vendors at 9 a.m. Thursday, June 21, at the Village gazebo and bids are due by 2:30 p.m. Thursday, July 11. The county will award the contract to the lowest bidder, following regular protocol for government-outsourced work.

New Procurement Process
Sarasota County launched eProcure, an online system for firms interested in bidding on government contracts, May 21.

Interested vendors have to register through scgov.net, a process for which they will need to enter their federal tax identification number and electronically attach a W-9 smaller than 298 megabytes. During the registration process, vendors can check the types of contracts they are concerned with and receive email notifications when contracts are added to the system.

Firms contacted about the Siesta Key Village maintenance contract seem pleased with the new system.
“I wouldn’t have known about (the maintenance contract) if the county hadn’t sent me a notification,” said John Reed, project manager for Tampa-based Central Florida Landscaping. A 38-page manual on the procurement website outlines the procedures and guidelines.

However, the website has proved troublesome for non-vendors looking for information about upcoming public works projects. Mark Smith, head of the Siesta Key Village Maintenance Corp., oversaw village maintenance while the county prepared a request for proposal for a new contractor — which took nearly nine months.

He expected to receive a draft of the proposal and the final document when the county released it on June 1, but he saw neither. James Scheidel is the county contact for the solicitation documents, who could not be reached by the Siesta Key architect. “Apparently I was ‘Schiedeled’, because I didn’t get anything from him either,” Smith said June 5, at the Siesta Key Village Association monthly meeting.

“Much like a mushroom, I’ve been kept in the dark,” he joked.

Siesta Key Maintenance contracts
Fourteen firms have downloaded the 82-page document explaining the Siesta Key Village maintenance contract as of June 6.
• Central Florida Landscaping, Inc., Tampa
• Cone Landscape & Design Inc., Sarasota
• Desormier Consulting Inc., Sarasota
• FASTSIGNS, Sarasota
• Boro Building & Property Maintenance, Sarasota
• JLC Hauling Inc., Myakka City
• Mako Web Sales LLC, Sarasota
• Natural Designs Landscaping Inc., Sarasota or Lutz
• Rick Richards Inc., Sarasota
• Storm Tech Inc., Sarasota
• The Sand Raker LLC, Sarasota
• Walkers Service Inc., Sarasota
• Wilhelm Brothers Inc., Sarasota
• Wicks Lawn Care, Sarasota

 Click here to view a pdf of the Siesta Key Village maintenance proposal