I have been reading the CVB Report for May 2010 (the first one).  This paragraph in particular.

I did talk to Bud Surles after the last city council meeting and he said he misspoke when he threw out the Million Dollar figure. He did say that city and county labor could greatly reduce the cost. I gave Jimmy Gosdin the plans and he said a worst case scenario would be $600,000, if we had a contract do all of the work. He though realistically it could be brought in for $300,000 to $400,000.

Why is this sort of back-door planning being done instead of putting the work out for bids? Shouldn't it rather be that a request for bids is put in the paper and the people who are wanting the job have to bid on it through a specific process?  I realize that such items are professional services are exempt from the process, but surely putting in concrete pads doesn't fall into that category. If someone reading this knows differently, please comment and cite the legal sources.

P.S. I'm very willing to be educated and to be shown wrong, if it is a perfectly acceptable practice to approach contractors, show them the plans and work out informational deals outside of a formal process.

Update: One more point of pondering. In the Glen Rose Reporter newspaper of July 7, 2010, there's a published bid notice for street improvements. I believe this is the same bid that has gone in repeatedly that has been flawed and appears to be correct this week. There's a notice at the bottom of the bid that says that for those who wants to get copies of the contract documents, they must pay $60.00 (non-refundable) for each set. That's the procedure that ensures that every person that wants to do a bid is following the same process, presumably making money for the city, and being fair. So why did Huckaby GIVE the plans to Gosdin, not just a potential bidder on the project, but no doubt definitely a bidder. Let's say that the request for proposal goes into the paper-will the plans be offered for free to ALL potential bidders since Gosdin got it for free? If you're going to do it for one company, you must do it for all. Another way of putting this: the process of getting contractors or businesses to do work is specific, and is done certain ways following certain procedures. Going to someone and bringing plans seems more than inappropriate, and seems like it would be showing favoritism to one company over another. There may only be one bidder or one entity that responds to a request for proposal, or there may be 50, but one cannot know that until it has gone into the paper publicly soliciting entries, which may also involve a cost for plans.

UPDATE: Huckaby at the City of Glen Rose Retreat