With the light winter last year, the Town of Nobleboro only used about half of its supply of road sand. This August, when the Board of Selectmen awarded the sand contract, they opted not to put the contract out to bid, and awarded it to Linwood Fraser, a contractor out of Damariscotta that has supplied the town’s sand in previous years.
Nobleboro resident Bill Dion, who supplied the town’s sand last year, called the decision not to put the sand out to bid unfair and said that he has “no faith in the officials in this town anymore.”
Dion, via his lawyer, Jennifer Bryant, sent a letter to the selectmen Sept. 2 stating that he “objects to the town’s failure to bid this year’s sanding contract…If records confirm that you engaged in non-arm’s-length transactions for your own personal benefit or gain, my client needs to take legal action.”
Dion said he has no intent to sue to the town, but he wants to “bring it to everyone’s attention that this is going on in all the small towns,” Dion said. “In an economy where we’re all scraping by, you should know that you can submit a bid and have a chance to get the work.”
There is no state law requiring the selectmen to put the sand contract out to bid, or to choose the lowest bidder if they do, said Eric Conrad, Director of Communications at Maine Municipal Association.
The only projects that the state requires be put out to bid are school construction projects over $500,000 and some projects that are paid for with state and federal money, Conrad said.
Some towns include such restrictions in their town charter. Although there is no copy of the Nobleboro Town Charter on file at the Town Office, Town Clerk Mary Ellen Anderson was absolutely certain that it does not contain any rules requiring town projects to be put out to bid.
“It should just be common courtesy for the selectmen to give someone who lives in the town a chance to bid,” Dion said. “If you pay taxes in the town, and you can do the job, you should get it before it goes to an out-of-towner – that’s the way it’s always been.”
Dion said he is appalled the selectmen would award a contract worth more than $10,000 without seeking competing bids.
Dion believes the decision to give the contract to Linwood Fraser is related to the fact that Fraser is the personal sand provider for Dick Spear, Chairman of the Nobleboro Board of Selectmen.
Spear flatly denies these allegations and said that he has never received any personal compensation or discounted rates from Fraser on his personal sand based on whether or not Fraser gets the town sand contract.
“Personally I use Fraser sometimes, but this was a board decision, not just mine,” Spear said. “We’re just trying to do what we think is best for the town.”
Most years, the town receives three sand bids: Dion’s, Fraser’s and one from Fraser’s brother, Billy Fraser. The town normally buys between 2000 and 2500 yards of sand.
Linwood Fraser provided the town’s sand for at least five consecutive years, Spear said.
Two years ago, Dion’s sand bid was 50 cents lower per yard than Fraser’s, according to records at the Town Office. Fraser bid $10 per yard and Dion bid $9.50; Billy Fraser’s bid was $11.50 per yard. That year, the selectmen opted to give the contract to Fraser, because he had always been good to work with, Spear said.
Last year, Dion attended the selectmen’s meeting when they opened the sand bids. Dion’s bid was again 50 cents lower than Fraser’s. Fraser bid $10, Dion bid $9.50, and Billy Fraser bid $9.50. That year, Dion was awarded the sand contract.
Although accounts of the situation vary in their details, there were issues surrounding the delivery of sand last year that left the town dissatisfied with Dion’s performance.
Buddy Brown, who owns Brown Homestead, the company that does Nobleboro’s plowing and handles the sand, said he never had problems with Dion. Buddy Brown’s brother, Lester Brown, who runs operations at the sand and salt shed said otherwise.
“All [Dion] did was complain,” Lester Brown said. “He was doing what he wanted to do, not working with the other people involved.”
All involved agree that Dion delivered quality said. “He has nice, coarse sand,” Lester Brown said.
In fact, Dion is the only contractor bidding in Nobleboro whose sand meets Maine Department of Transportation specifications for road sand – a quality that is specifically required, according to the town’s advertisements seeking bids in previous years – Dion said.
The problems arose because Brown Homestead stores their trucks in the sand shed during the summer. Every fall, they remove the trucks and fill the shed with sand.
“We let the contractor know when we’re ready, and they deliver the sand – that’s the way we always do it,” Lester Brown said. “[Dion] wasn’t willing to work with us on the delivery schedule.”
Dion did not know when he signed the contract that he was going to be required to deliver all of the sand in a three-day window, starting when Brown Homestead was ready. “That’s one of their rules,” Dion said.
The timing of the deliveries is important for Brown Homestead, because Brown mixes road salt in with the sand in the trucks before it is dumped into the shed, which saves time mixing the sand and salt and ensures there is salt mixed throughout the sand supply.
Neither the town’s advertisement seeking bids, nor the sand contract, specifically require that the sand be delivered in a three-day period, but the advertisement does say, “The contractor will work with Brown Homestead to arrange a method for hauling so they can mix and pile the sand.”
Dion said he was impatient to deliver the sand because he was trying to comply with the town’s Oct. 1 deadline for the sand delivery.
“I was told they were going to take away the contract if it wasn’t in by Oct. 1,” Dion said.
Spear and Brown both said the town did not, and has never, enforced a deadline on sand delivery.
“I’ve been out there loading in middle of October,” Brown said.
Spear said that there was no specific deadline for Dion to deliver the sand last year.
The deadline every year has been Oct. 1, “as long as the salt is available,” according to the town’s advertisements seeking bids.
“The only one trying to keep to the agreement was me,” Dion said.
Dion spent thousands of dollars hiring extra trucks to deliver the sand so that he could make the delivery within Brown Homestead’s time constraints, and the money for the trucks cut deeply into his profit margin for the sand, Dion said.
Both Brown and Spear, in separate interviews, said they remember Dion telling Spear at the end of the ordeal, “I’m never doing this again.”
“[Dion] told [Spear], ‘You can give it to whoever you want,'” Brown said.
Dion said he told Spear, “I’m never doing it that way again – with those constraints.”
This year, rather than put the sand out to bid, the selectmen voted to award the contract to Linwood Fraser for $9 per yard.
“It’s less than we paid last year, and [Fraser] has always been good to us,” Spear said. “It’s about half of the amount of sand we usually buy, and [Fraser] offered a good price, so we decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to put it out to bid.”
