by Mindy Aguon

Guam - Eight months after the request for proposal was first published, the Guam International Airport Authority still has yet to award the highly lucrative and much anticipated multimillion dollar specialty retail concessionaire contract. While the contract with DFS Guam expired, the airport has been on a month-to-month contract until the new contract is awarded. A decision was expected to be made today but that has been delayed yet again.

Anticipation filled the air at the GIAA boardroom this afternoon. Most of the attendees were waiting for the board to award the specialty retail concession worth tens of millions of dollars. In July of last year, the airport issued the RFP in hopes to get a company that was willing to provide specialty retail concessions as well as help develop and improve the look of that particular area in the concourse.

Four companies submitted bids and the airport formed an evaluation team that consisted of deputy general manager Pedro Martinez, airport services manager Jean Arriola, comptroller Carlos Bordallo and expansion manager Frank Santos.

Executive director Chuck Ada iterated over the choices, saying, "Number one, Proposer A; number two, Proposer D; number three, Proposer C; number four, Proposed B. I reviewed the evaluation sheets of the evaluators and approved the ranking results determined by the evaluation committee and I request that the board of directors approve the ranking results as determined by the evaluation committee."

Out of an abundance of caution, the airport management and legal counsel decided to leave the company names out and instead assigned letters to each proposal so that the evaluators wouldn't know what company had submitted the proposal. Airport board member Ed Untalan said, "I think it was incumbent upon counsel to develop a process to eliminate any potential bias, any potential influence, and focus things totally on the reliance of management in their analysis."

The contract is worth millions of dollars and the airport would immediately benefit by seeing an increase in funding. Airport board chair Francisco Santos and member Lynda Tolan recused themselves from discussion and voting on the award due to concerns that were raised late last year that the two had received gift bags from one of the offerors from the Guam Visitors Bureau. Santos said, "I do not believe there were any ethical violations however to avoid any appearance of this to maintain public confidence in this procurement and in this solicitation process, I will abstain from participating in any discussion or vote relating to this RFP."

Vice chair Jess Torres took over the meeting but said he felt uncomfortable with the evaluation process, noting, "What makes me uncomfortable at this juncture all of a sudden we come up with a system that I've never seen before. I don't know about the rest of the board but what's wrong with what we have done before."

After a brief recess, board members made a motion to table the item until a later time.

Legal counsel Mike Pangelinan said, "We actually just want to do an analysis and come up with a recommendation as to what to do and how to proceed on this matter." Torres said, "I think that's an excellent idea."

KUAM News spoke with DFS Guam's Jim Beighley at the meeting, asking if the company was the first to submit a proposal or if they knew who was "Proposer A", but he said the company has no comment at this time. Representatives from the Lotte Group were also in attendance at today's meeting and said they were unaware who was the top ranked offeror.

The airport board meets on the last Thursday of every month.