Changes considered for bid work

The company is also in line to receive $100,000 to design a fence.
& lt;a href=mailto:siff@vindy.com & gt;By STEPHEN SIFF & lt;/a & gt;
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
VIENNA -- Western Reserve Port Authority will look into whether a county or municipality could be drafted to help the airport get bids for equipment, instead of paying an engineering company to serve as its personal shopping assistant.
"I think it is a capital idea," said Steve Bowser, airport director of aviation.
At a meeting Wednesday, the Western Reserve Port Authority Board passed several resolutions to move ahead with spending nearly $900,000 of its 2002 allotment from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Most of the money is expected to pay for a new front-end loader, plow truck and plow blades to be used for removing snow from airport runways.
But plans also called for R.W. Armstrong of Indiana to be paid $20,000 to prepare bid specifications for the snow removal equipment, evaluate vendors and award the winning bid -- a process cities, townships and counties routinely undertake when purchasing vehicles.
"Off the top of my head, this is kind of a routine process in government," said Mahoning County Commissioner Ed Reese.
What's available
Trumbull and Mahoning counties are equal partners in supporting the port authority, which runs the airport.
Trumbull County Commissioner Michael O'Brien said bid specifications are mostly boilerplate.
"On the face of it, it appears there are four dozen governments between the two counties that would be happy to assist the port authority with any bid specifications," he said.
The port authority has already advertised for bids on the snow removal equipment, based on 30 pages of specifications drawn up by R.W. Armstrong. Sealed bids are scheduled to be opened next week.
On Wednesday, the port authority board unanimously passed a motion which would allow Bowser to sign the contract with R.W. Armstrong, pending the board chairman's approval.
"It is not set in concrete," Bowser said.
Also in contract
The contract also lays out plans to pay R.W. Armstrong $100,000 to design plans to replace a 6-foot-high chain-link fence around the airport with a 10-foot-high fence, and to look at other possible security measures.
"I don't doubt the ability of your company -- I think you have done a really good job for us, but this seems like a lot of money," port authority board member Martin Solomon told a company representative.
The engineering study -- which includes none of the costs of construction -- costs so much because it requires workers to go over the fence's entire length -- more than three miles, said Dan Petno, Armstrong representative.
R.W. Armstrong will also take aerial photographs of the fence and map utility lines, he said.
The eventual cost to replace the fence could be covered by a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Petno said.
Replacing the 1.5 miles of fence along state Route 193 earlier this year cost $500,000.
The port authority has maintained a relationship with R.W. Armstrong for years, and the company has routinely worked on the airport's grant requests.
"R.W. Armstrong is our conduit to the FAA," Bowser said.