JASPER, Tenn. - The last several months have shown an increasingly dysfunctional relationship among Jasper city leaders, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.
At the Jasper Board of Mayor and Aldermen's April meeting, Vice Mayor Paul West said he proposed soliciting prices during the March meeting in order to buy a new fire engine through a lease-purchase plan, and the board voted unanimously to do so.
West estimated the price for that could be between $35,000 and $38,000 per year over 12 years, or a total of $456,000.
He said Jasper's fire department does not have the capability to put out a major fire on its own with its current equipment, and that he hadn't seen any proposals or prices since the board voted to solicit them.
"First of all, they [the proposals] came in as a bid," Mayor Paul Evans said. "We did not solicit a bid. We solicited quotations, and it was sent out as a bid with the truck to be delivered no later than June 10, 2019. That is not what this board voted to do."
The quotes were to be for "future reference," he said.
"We went back and looked at the [meeting's] minutes, and that's what was done," Evans said.
City Attorney Mark Raines said the board's action in March was to solicit proposals "to basically get an idea of what prices and what options were available."
"There was not anything in the minutes that said that it would be delivered by a certain date," he said. "It was gathering information on equipment that's out there."
Raines said he read the proposal that was sent out to various companies, and that it did have a specific delivery date on it.
Some of the bidders thought they were jockeying for an actual sale and delivery by June 10, he said.
"That was not what the board voted to do," Raines said. "The board was gathering information to see what we could do - if it was feasible or not feasible."
He said the board's vote "somehow got misconstrued to be a bid."
One vendor representative at the meeting said the request indicated the proposals were to be opened at 4 p.m. CDT on April 8 and read aloud.
That was never done, he said.
"That's what the letter said, which is why myself and other vendors went through the trouble to prepare [bids] for the town," the representative said.
He said he did believe the town was ready to purchase a new fire truck based on the request.
Evans said he did not send out the request letter.
"Vice Mayor West sent the letter out," he said. "I did not even know about the letter until the first vendor called. They emailed me the letter, and I sent it to [Raines] to look at."
Raines said any request for proposals approved by the board must be sent out by Jasper's mayor.
"The mayor's the one that has to receive them back," he said. "That's the mayor's job."
"I understand that, but I knew it wasn't going to get done if I didn't do it," West said. "This board voted last month to do something, and it's not getting done."
Raines said the matter was "not about politics."
"It's about the law," he told West. "It's about procedures. We're all governed by the same law and the same procedures, so if there's a question about that in the future, call me. If there's some issue, I'll take it to the mayor myself."
The city will continue to accept vendor proposals on a new fire truck, officials said, but the board did not set a deadline for those submissions.
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.