Star Tribune
Proctor awards garage project to second-lowest bidder, ends up in court
PROCTOR, MINN — A year after this city put out a call for construction bids for a modest Public Works garage, the building sits half-finished — the subject of an unprecedented tangle that at one point landed Proctor in a rare legal position: in contempt of court.
The dispute over the $700,000 garage includes a contested bid process, a court-ordered work stoppage that didn’t immediately stop work and claims of a construction company’s incompetence answered with claims of on-going harassment from members of the carpenters’ union.
Now the garage, which is meant to hold equipment, stands roofless on a dirt plot off Kirkus Street near Proctor’s sand-and-salt operation. And the case between Nordic Underwater Services and the 3-square-mile city of 3,100 adjacent to Duluth is winding its way through the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
“This case never had to get to this point,” said Aaron Dean, Nordic’s Twin Cities-based attorney. “We had to sue them.”
Second-lowest bidder
Proctor put out a call for bids for the Public Works garage in March 2023 and received responses from five construction companies. In Minnesota, cities must follow competitive bidding laws for projects with an estimated cost of more than $175,000, and the “lowest responsible bidder” gets the job.
In this case, the project went to the second-lowest bidder: Ray Riihiluoma Inc. (RRI). The Cloquet-Minn., company said it could build the grarage for $733,000.
The bid from Nordic, which is based in nearby Carlton, Minn., was the lowest — $127,000 less than RRI’s. After discussing the contract in a 45-minute closed-door session last April 17, the City Council gave RRI the job.
City Attorney John Bray, who has since resigned, told Nordic that it had not been picked.
“The City Council determined that you weren’t the lowest responsible bidder and did not afford the city the best value for the project,” he wrote on April 28.
The move was unprecedented. According to court documents, Proctor had never awarded a project to anyone but the lowest bidder.
“Responsible bidder” was the sticking point. Bray included the general criteria for what makes a responsible bidder, including the character of the company, whether it is skilled enough for the job and its history with other projects. He did not immediately indicate where Nordic fell short.
The city offered a “no comment” through Peter Mikhail, the attorney who within recent months replaced Bray on this case.
Nordic pressed the city for more details about why it was passed over and was given a few emails from former employees who cited safety and wage issues at the company.
“Any one instance of that behavior on this project would greatly delay this project and make it more expensive, as well as placing employees at risk for harm,” Proctor Mayor Chad Ward said in documents filed in St. Louis County District Court.
Nordic, in response, described the claims as the grumblings of short-term employees who had left on bad terms. It said the city allowed these character references without investigating the credibility of the former workers.
Nordic said in court filings that those ex-employees all belonged to the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters, while its workers were members of the independent Christian Labor Association.
The former union’s dislike for the latter “has bled all over its attempts to secure new work,” Nordic told the court.
In its lawsuit, the company asked that work stop on the Public Works garage, which RRI started in May 2023. It also wanted acknowledgement that Proctor had picked the wrong company. And it wanted its bid and legal fees paid.
Nordic secured the work stoppage and was recently awarded about $3,500. But the permanent injunction ordered by District Judge Eric Hylden this past fall didn’t stick. Proctor gave RRI a new contract to winterize what it had built so far, a move that landed the city in contempt of court.
Hylden did not find RRI in contempt, though.
The company is in its final months before dissolving, a planned ending based on the retirement of one of the partners, vice president David Franzen said.
‘A soap opera’
In February, Proctor appealed Hylden’s judgement granting a permanent injunction. Later, it tried to stop the appeal in favor of just getting a clarification on the permanent injunction — but that motion was denied. The next hearing is not yet scheduled, but Dean expects oral arguments will be held this summer.
“It is a soap opera,” said Dean, Nordic’ attorney. “I’ve never seen public officials behave this way.”
On a recent weekday the work area was quiet, though there are still tire grooves in the thick mud at the plot off Kirkus Street. There is a concrete slab of flooring, a frame and some walls — but no roof. It sits open to the elements. Phil Larson, who was once mayor of this city, said most people have noticed that work has stalled.
“People are talking about it,” he said, but just people who closely follow local politics.
Jake Benson, who served a single term as mayor in the 1980s and is publisher of the Proctor Journal, said he has coffee with an eclectic crew of locals who regularly ask for a status update. He sticks to what is in the court documents. Benson serves on the city council, so he has to be careful of what he says.
“We’ve never once invoked that,” Lingo said. “There have been conversations [about] in order to compel ID you need to have identification, or you could be arrested for that, or if you’re not behaving, or you need to be trespassed. But that’s a different conversation than immigration, and deportation has never been brought to the conversation.”
Hundreds of U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, have declared themselves sanctuary cities, where police are discouraged from reporting people’s immigration status unless they are investigating a serious crime.
Marta has sold empanadas and Ecuadorian desserts on Lake Street, usually making $60 to $70 a day to pay her rent and support her children. The 38-year-old woman also sold food on the streets of Ecuador, where migrants have come in record numbers to Minnesota, fleeing poverty and violence. The Fort Snelling immigration court has a backlog of over 13,341 Ecuadorian cases pending, a huge increase since 2018, when there were 344 cases.
Cindy Weckwerth, environmental health director for the Minneapolis Health Department, said in recent months, the city has seen an increase in unlicensed vendors and complaints about them.
Lingo said so far this year, there have been 38 violations and citations for operating a sidewalk food cart without a license; repeat offenders can get cited, which brings a $200 fine.
Inspectors are sometimes accompanied by police officers, Lingo said, because often vendors resist giving their identity and sometimes are uncooperative or are amid a large group.
Star Tribune
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is slowly opening up about her childhood past amid domestic violence
She realized that violence in the home wasn’t normal when she finally left for college and sensed that other kids didn’t grow up that way. “Most people don’t call home to see if I should come home after school, or if I should go to my best friend Lauren’s house,” she said.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan observed artwork hanging at Cornerstone, an advocacy center for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual violence. The tour of the Minneapolis facility was led by Colleen Schmitt, director of emergency services. (Renée Jones Schneider)
Flanagan has often connected with Minnesotans by sharing tales about her personal life, such as when she recounts what it was like to grow up with a single mom in St. Louis Park who relied on public assistance. And yet for many years, she said, she didn’t feel comfortable talking openly about her family’s history with domestic abuse.
That changed when she got a nudge from an unlikely source. Flanagan, as she tells it, was in Washington, D.C., in 2009 as part of her work with the progressive training group Wellstone Action. Then-Vice President Joe Biden was receiving an award from the Sheila Wellstone Institute for his advocacy of domestic violence victims. Before the official ceremony, Flanagan felt compelled to share with Biden about the abuse she observed as a child.
“I just start weeping, and the vice president stood up and gave me a hug. I literally cried into his chest,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘If you can tell the vice president that story, I bet you can tell other people that story.’ ”
And so she has, gradually.
The advocates at Cornerstone, including executive director Artika Roller, who has spent more than two decades helping abuse victims, heard Flanagan speak about it at a rally for action among advocates and survivors.
Another closure of I-494 in the south metro will put thousands of motorists on detour this weekend.
The eastbound lanes of the freeway will be shut down between Hwy. 100 and Cedar Avenue/Hwy. 77 and westbound lanes between Cedar Avenue/Hwy. 77 and Interstate 35W from 10 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said.
Some ramps leading to I-494 will start closing at 8 p.m. Friday. Motorists will be directed to use Crosstown Hwy. 62 to get around the closure, the agency said.
American Boulevard, which runs parallel to I-494, will be closed starting Monday through Nov. 11 between Hwy. 100 and France Avenue in Bloomington.
American Blvd. is closed to through traffic in both directions between Hwy 100 and France Ave
The closures are related to construction in which MnDOT is adding an EZ Pass lane on I-494 between I-35W and Hwy. 100, rebuilding the I-35W/I-494 interchange and replacing bridges over I-494 at Portland, Nicollet and 12th avenues.
In the west metro, westbound Hwy. 55 remains closed through Nov. 1 between Hwy. 169 and Interstate 494. Motorists can use I-394 as a detour MnDOT said.
