County shuns McMinnville Ford
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“That just doesn’t make sense to me,” said Commissioner Sally Brock. “You would think that for $76 they’d give it to a business here in town that pays taxes, that hires people here.”
McMinnville Ford owner Terry Kidd said he was confused as well that for so little difference in price the bid would be awarded to a business from outside the county.
“It’s not a matter of who it is,” Kidd said. “It’s a matter of every year our business has collected almost $700,000 in sales tax, of which almost $200,000 of that is for local taxes. We collect that for the county. Our business tax and wheel tax is almost $10,000. We collect that for the county. Our property tax on our business is over $16,000, which goes to the county. My personal property tax is $1,044, which goes to the county.”
Kidd said the fact his business is local should have had at least some effect on the Purchasing Committee’s decision.
“I find it hard to believe that in a bid process, that’s for the lowest and best bid, I would think that part of the best bid would be looking at the local businesses that do contribute to the county, which we do. Out of my 30 employees, 18 employees live in Warren County. So, not only do we produce income base for Warren County, a lot of employees own property and pay taxes for Warren County.”
Like Brock, Kidd felt the difference in price didn’t warrant going outside the county.
“In this case it was $76 per vehicle, which equates down to four-tenths of a percent,” said Kidd. “I just believe that was a wrong move for the county. For $375 they let the business go out of the county, and I think that’s totally counter-productive to what the county is standing for.
“You know, they want to sit there and say do business at home. What surprises me is if you take $375, I would bet the county spent more money than that on their trip to Canada to try to solicit business, but they’re not willing to look at that to support local business, and I was very disappointed. I think that’s sending a terrible message to all the businesses here.”
County Executive Kenneth Rogers, who made the original motion to accept the Thompson Ford bid, agrees that the Purchasing Committee may not have made the best decision.
“You know, I don’t know of anybody that’s perfect,” Rogers said. “We all make mistakes. I make mistakes every day, and this is probably one of them. All I can say is we’re aware of it, and we’ll do better from now on.”
Rogers acknowledged that Kidd has legitimate concerns.
“I see his point completely,” Rogers said. “But when we looked at it, we looked at it as a lower bid. Maybe we did make a mistake. It was less than a $400 difference. We should have given it to the local business. We didn’t really put the pencil to it. We should have looked at it closer.”
Brock and Rogers were concerned the county wouldn’t be able to get the vehicles serviced at McMinnville Ford due to the circumstances, but Kidd said that might not be the case.
“That’s a decision I’ll have to make,” Kidd said. “I would not want to pull my support from the sheriff’s department at all because I think law enforcement vehicles are important, and I think it’s important for me to stand behind the sheriff’s department because I don’t believe they made the decision on this matter. As disappointed as I am, I could be ugly about it, but that’s not my style.”