Second Eagle River road contract in weeks draws just one bid

For the second time in about a month, a road contract for the Chugiak-Birchwood-Eagle River service area has drawn exactly one bidder. The Assembly votes Tuesday on a brush and stump disposal deal worth up to $1.16 million, and only Eklutna Inc. bid on it.

Eklutna offered $8 per cubic yard for organic material and $18 for trees and stumps, capping the first year at $290,000. Three optional renewals at the same rates would bring the ceiling to $1.16 million if the city uses them all. Eklutna would provide a disposal site inside the service area for material Eagle River street crews generate.

The single bid follows a pattern. Weeks earlier, the same service area's year-round road maintenance contract drew one bidder as well, McKenna Brothers Paving. Two consecutive sole-bid procurements in one rural service area raise a question worth asking of any public contract: is the local market simply thin, or is competition not reaching these solicitations. The answer decides whether the city is getting a fair price or the only price on offer.

Geography may explain part of it. Eklutna Inc., the Native village corporation for the area, is among the largest private landowners in the Anchorage bowl, and a brush-disposal contract turns on having suitable land close to where the crews work. Where few parties control the land, few can bid. The city recommends the contract as an indefinite-quantity agreement, ordering work as needed with no guaranteed minimum, subject to appropriation.