COSTA MESA : 37 Police Cars to Be Bought in El Cajon

The city will buy 37 new police patrol cars from an El Cajon dealership after giving local dealerships an extra try at winning the contract.

El Cajon Ford won the $513,000 contract on a 4-1 City Council vote Monday night. The dealership also was the lowest bidder last month, but the council rejected all the bids when a wide gap showed up in the bid amounts. Council members said they were disappointed that dealerships within the city, Theodore Robins Ford and Connell Chevrolet, did not offer lower prices because the council wanted to give local businesses the contract.

Although the delay did not result in awarding the contract to a local business, it did lower the winning bid from $575,000 originally proposed by El Cajon.

“This is why I went to the city and explained to them that there (was) a very valid reason for them to consider throwing out the old bids and rebidding,” Theodore Robins Jr. said.

Because El Cajon Ford was bidding on the sale of 2,000 cars to the California Highway Patrol, it was offering a discount on government bids, Robins said. The discount came into play between the first and second bids.

Robins submitted the second-lowest bid, at $522,000. If the council had awarded it the contract, the city would have received 1% of the bid price, or $4,851. Taking that into account, the bid from Theodore Robins was still $3,645 more than the lowest bid.

“In one sense I’m disappointed, but the city won out. We vindicated ourselves in showing that we could be very competitive,” Robins said, adding that the city continues to lease about 20 undercover police cars from his dealership.

The purchase will replace cars that are currently leased from Theodore Robins. The first request for bids asked the dealerships for different options, including leasing the cars for various lengths of time or selling them.

After the first process, city officials decided that it was in the city’s best interest to buy the cars instead of leasing, so the second request for proposals was only for the purchase of the cars.

The winning bid also offered an additional discount to the city if it pays within 20 days.