Bid for truck auction misplaced

The vehicle sold for less than what the barber bid.
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
HUBBARD -- A city man thinks there may be flaws in how the city handles the bidding process for surplus inventory after his bid was lost, but officials say it was simply misplaced.
Bill Reid, a city resident and local barber, submitted a bid to City Auditor Michael Villano in May for a 60-foot bucket truck that the city no longer could use. Reid made an offer of $1,400 for the truck.
Reid said he later learned that his bid had been misplaced and not opened May 26 along with other bid submissions. He said a secretary in the auditor's office told him the bid was lost, then said "people make mistakes."
"That was the secretary's attitude, that people just make mistakes. I feel that if I had the high bid I should have the truck," he said. "I don't know how many bids they could have had, but they should keep better track of these things."
The truck ultimately sold to a Youngstown-Hubbard Road man for $750. The city received three bids for the truck.
Submission procedure
Villano said there was no under-handed dealing in the sale of the truck. He said misplacing Reid's bid offer was an accident that has not happened at any other time in his nine years with the city.
"The bid got stuck in a different file. We did not find it until [Reid] came in and asked us if we had looked at his bid," Villano said.
Villano, however, said he can see how Reid's bid was misplaced. He said Reid brought the bid into the office three days before bids were to be opened in a small white envelope without anything written on it. Other bids, he said, were clearly marked with "inventory sale" or some other description.
Villano said press releases regarding such sales give detailed instructions on how submissions are to be addressed to avoid such situations. He said the city is partly responsible for misplacing the bid, but Reid must also shoulder some of the blame for not properly addressing the envelope.
jgoodwin@vindy.com