In a unanimous vote Monday, including one cast by Chair Paul Coble, the Wake County Board of Commissioners awarded a $1.2 million contract for the renovation of a waste station to Scotia Construction, Inc.\u2014a company owned and operated by Coble\u2019s brother-in-law.<\/p>\n
Three companies submitted \u201csealed bids\u201d to the County and Scotia was the lowest bidder. DH Griffin bid $1.6 million and Environmental Specialties International bid $1.7 million. Scotia\u2019s initial bid was for $1.4 million.<\/p>\n
Coble disclosed his relationship to Scotia as soon as the item came up for debate and asked the county attorney if he, Coble, needed to recuse himself from the vote. The county attorney said no and no other county commissioner raised questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey obviously didn\u2019t see any conflict,\u201d said Coble. \u201cTypically, I don\u2019t come across companies I know. Once I realized, I figured the best thing to do was let everybody know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though chair Coble and I don\u2019t agree on a number of issues I have great trust in the professionalism of county staff and what they do and chair Coble\u2019s ethics,\u201d said Democratic commissioner Erv Portman. \u201cWe don\u2019t agree on a lot of things, but I think he\u2019s an ethical guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
A quick search of Scotia shows that it doesn\u2019t appear to have any recent complaints or violations registered with the Environmental Protection Agency or the North Carolina Department of Labor.<\/p>\n
Scotia will be responsible for reinforcing floors, walls and pits at the East Wake Transfer Facility, a waste receiving station that was created in 2008. The facility is operated by Wake County and used by the county\u2019s 12 municipalities.<\/p>\n
The sealed bidding process is designed to prevent fraud or favoritism.<\/p>\n
Bids are kept sealed at the county\u2019s purchasing department until the deadline to submit bids passes. At that time, the bids are opened publicly, where oftentimes builders attend.<\/p>\n
After that county staff will recommend \u201cthe lowest, responsible bidder\u201d to the county commission. The wording \u201cresponsible\u201d allows staff to pick the company that is best equipped to complete specifics within a given project.<\/p>\n
After the bids have been opened, they become public information. However, they don\u2019t come across commissioners\u2019 desks until a few days before meetings, which is when Coble said he realized Scotia was involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cA whole lot of people move it forward to us before I ever put my eyes on it,\u201d said Coble. \u201cThat gives me comfort and it should give others comfort too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At their meeting Monday county commissioners unanimously approved a contract to renovate a waste station in eastern Wake County. The contract went to Chair Paul Coble\u2019s brother-in-law\u2019s company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,15],"tags":[926,802,676,99,925,791],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}