The Woodlands Monitor (The Woodlands, TX) - Last night a joint board meeting was held at 2201 Lake Woodlands Drive.  Board members from the Woodlands Commercial Owners Association (WCOA), The Woodlands Association (TWA) and the Woodlands Community Association (WCA) were present.  Quarters were cramped as the total membership of these three boards consist of nearly thirty individuals. 

The first item discussed was the streetscape maintenance contract.  Streetscape maintenance includes mowing and edging, pruning, trash removal, irrigation, sweeping and clearing, tree removal and tree maintenance as well as other maintenance services.  This streetscape contract only includes right of ways along all the major thoroughfares and collector streets. It does not include internal residential streets.  Also no park or pathway maintenance is included in the contract.

The developer has been given this contract for approximately the last 9 years.  According to the data provided at this meeting the residents of The Woodlands will pay The Woodlands Land Development Company approximately 1.7 million dollars in 2007 for this service. 

This large contract had not gone through a proper bidding process in those 9 years.  This fact was brought to the attention of the WCA board by a resident some months ago. Realizing that this contract was being renewed every year without going through a proper bidding process, the WCA asked 'staff' (aka Woodlands Community Service Corporation dba The Community Associations of The Woodlands) to put this contract out for a formal bidding process.

The bid packet produced during this process contains the specifications about what quality and quantity of services are required to maintain these streetscape areas.  This bid packet, produced by the 'staff', contained some 1700 pages. 

Out of the ten companies that attended the mandatory pre-bid meeting, three actually submitted bids.

The bids and companies were as follows:

Brickman(The Woodlands Land Development Company) -  $1,919,433.00/yr
Houston Grotech Services - $949,013.02/yr
TruGreen - $958,565.67/yr

The above bids were the annual cost based on a 70 month contract.

Due to the complexity of the process, the Boards voted to renew the contract with Brickman for an additional year in order to gather more information.

A similar discussion ensued in regards to the parks and pathways maintenance bids.  The same three companies had submitted bids for this contract.  However, these bids showed much less variance than did the streetscape maintenance bids.

Another topic of discussion was the additional law enforcement agreement. 

Requests for information concerning additional law enforcement were sent to both the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office and the Montgomery County Constables Precinct 3.  Additionally representatives of both agencies were invited to attend the board meeting and respond to any questions that may be presented by the board members.

Both the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office and the Montgomery County Constable, Precinct 3, responded to the request.

Additionally, Montgomery County Constable for Precinct 3, Tim Holifield, attended the meeting and addressed the Boards.  Mr. Holifield pointed out the deficiencies in the current bidding process developed by the 'staff'.  Mr. Holifield also reiterated his reasons for refusing to adequately complete the request for information.  After addressing the Boards, Constable Tim Holifield responded to questions from board members.

In the absence of Sheriff Tommy Gage,  law enforcement consultant, Jimmie Dotson and General Manager, Mr. Norrell addressed questions from the Boards concerning the sheriff's ability to provide the additional law enforcement.  A draft copy of the agreement was available at the meeting.

Due to the late hour, the meeting adjourned without completing discussion on the law enforcement issues.  Another joint meeting will be scheduled to complete the unfinished agenda items.<...