The Boulder County Commissioners deny they violated open meetings law when selecting a debris-cleanup contractor to clear debris caused by the Dec. 30 Marshall Fire.
The commissioners said in a new release Wednesday that a complaint filed in Boulder County District Court claiming they hired DRC Environmental Services, LLC., without proper public notice will unnecessarily delay Marshall Fire cleanup efforts.
“The county isn’t happy with this delay,” Commissioner Matt Jones said in the news release. “We did everything properly to comply with the law, and we are confident we will prevail in this lawsuit. We will be responding as expeditiously as possible with the hope that the courts will resolve the lawsuit quickly.”
“Marshall Fire survivors are waiting for debris removal to happen,” Jones added. “Our awarded contractor is ready to go and is lining up subcontractors to perform cleanup work. It’s frustrating that anyone would want to delay our community’s ability to recover from this devastating wildfire.”
A complaint filed in Boulder County District Court in February by Demanding Integrity in Government Spending, or DIGS, alleges the commissioners selected DRC Emergency Services LLA during a 15-minute session that did not include public hearing, according to BizWest.
MIchael Brown, a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President George Bush and a radio talk show host, founded DIGS.
“The public — the citizens of the state of Colorado — by law has the right to know about Boulder County’s processes, its efforts to follow FEMA’s complex procurement framework and its substantive evaluation of the bidders who threw their hats in the ring to handle the exceedingly complex job of the cleanup of the aftermath of the Marshall Fire,” according to the lawsuit as quoted in BizWest.
Brown is seeking access to recordings of a series of executive sessions held by Boulder County’s bid review committee in January and February, BizWest states.
Boulder County Commissioners accepted the recommendations of the county’s bid review committee and awarded the bid to DRC on February 10. The use of bid review committees is a common practice in government operations to ensure effective and timely procurement of government bids, the news release states.
“Bid review committees have never been viewed as local public bodies before,” the news release states.
Louisville City Manager said this week that the city hoped to have a contractor working on the ground by next week, according to BIzWest.
