Three representatives from ComSouth, including its president, Dale Purvis, addressed the Newton County Board of Supervisors to dispute the board’s recent awarding of the bid to upgrade the 911 call center.
Purvis said he thought his company wasn’t given a fair chance to match the bid by Jackson Communications.
Supervisors Charles Godwin and Joe Alexander assured the men that the board did consider both bids but decided that Jackson Communications offered the best bid that would meet the county’s specific needs. The final bid that was approved from Jackson Communications was for $331,000.
The ComSouth representatives claimed that they emailed a proposal for $279,000 for the upgrade to 911 Emergency Management Director Brian Taylor but Taylor and the board members said they never received that final bid from ComSouth.
“We were led to believe that the lowest bidder was going to get this deal and we got you the lowest bid. I don’t like what happened and I feel like we got shafted,” Purvis said.
Purvis also said that Jackson Communications is not under state contract to sell the equipment and that the agreement wouldn’t be official.
Taylor said that the company contacted county firefighters and other EMA personnel without his knowledge to sway the decision towards their favor, but Purvis said he had no knowledge of those communications.
Alexander specified that the bid asks for the lowest and best bid and said that he has had good experiences with ComSouth and expects to work with them in the future on other equipment needs for his district.
Both ComSouth and Jackson Communications are Motorola dealerships. Purvis referred to a situation in December 2014 when former EMA and 911 Director Steve Baggett advised the board for a $500,000 upgrade to fix a problem where emergency calls could come in to 911 dis-patch but the locations of the callers were not available. The current equipment had been purchased from ComSouth and their technicians fixed the failing system for $4,500 with parts they had in stock. Baggett had failed to contact ComSouth about the issue.
The board said the decision had been made but that Board Attorney Jason Mangum said he would confirm if Jackson Communications was indeed a state-contracted seller of the equipment.
The county approved Jackson Communications to purchase a Motorola Solutions system at its Feb. 5 meeting. They also voted to purchase an emergency medical dispatch system from Priority Dispatch for $41,210, including software and hardware maintenance and training, and a $25,000 mapping system from Tri-State Mapping with a$2,500-year maintenance agreement for software and training.
In other business, Shannon Dyess of Mississippi Deferred Compensation spoke to the board about retirement plans for county workers.
Also, Newton County Historical and Genealogical Society President Glenn Harrison and NCHGS Secretary Susan Sibley updated the board about the society’s activities and thanked the board for their continued support.
