City pays $90,614 more to Regina company
CBC News
The City of Winnipeg rejected a bid by a local company for seven new Olympia ice-resurfacing machines. Instead, it will pay thousands more to a Regina-based company. The City of Winnipeg rejected a bid by a local company for seven new Olympia ice-resurfacing machines. Instead, it will pay thousands more to a Regina-based company. (Guertin Equipment Ltd.)
Managers at a Winnipeg company that sells ice-resurfacing machines are mystified that city officials rejected a tendered bid to provide new, Canadian-made machines for use at city rinks in favor of paying more to a Regina-based company for U.S.-made equipment.
Greg Chliboyko of Guertin Equipment Ltd. said the company aggressively sought the city's business by tendering a bid of $554,205 for seven new machines.
But instead, the city chose to purchase the equipment from Regina's Fer-Mark Equipment at a cost of $644,820, city finance documents show.
The Saskatchewan company sells U.S.-made Zamboni-branded equipment while Guertin sells ice-resurfacers made by Olympia in Canada.
Chliboyko, the sales manager at Guertin, told CBC News that he and his colleagues were shocked by the city's choice.
"We are all local people, we're all local taxpayers, we're all citizens … users of the rinks," he said.
'Quite frankly, we were nothing short of shocked.'—Greg Chliboyko
"Where there was a gap of $13,000 per machine or [about] $91,000 over the entire bid — which is completely staggering — it blew our socks off that we didn't win," Chliboyko added.
"Quite frankly, we were nothing short of shocked."
A spokesperson for the mayor's office would only say the machines offered by Guertin didn't meet the city's needs.
Chliboyko said the official reason from the city was that the people operating machines preferred the Zamboni equipment's transmission.
"That blocked out any other competitor," Chliboyko said.
He added that the savings the city would have seen from buying locally could have been plowed into rinks the city admits are in dire need of repairs.
One small concession is that Guertin will be contracted to maintain the machines as the Regina company does not have a maintenance facility in Winnipeg.
Chliboyko said he thought if the ice cleaning machines his company sells are good enough to be used by National Hockey League teams like the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames, they'd be good enough to use at local arenas.
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