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Longtime livestock feed supplier gone from Illinois State Fairgrounds

Posted November 01, 2007 11:00 pm

Dana Heupel

After 22 years as the feed and bedding concessionaire for horses and livestock at the Illinois State Fairgrounds, Bill Mitchell is packing up his belongings and moving out.

It isn't because he wants to.

Mitchell's last no-bid contract as the exclusive vendor to sell pine shavings, feed, hay and straw for animals at the Illinois State Fair and other events at the Fairgrounds expired at midnight Wednesday. The state Department of Agriculture had decided to seek competitive bids for vendors, and Mitchell wouldn't abide by the new requirements.

"It's not just the money," he said. "They wanted a monthly audit of my books, every month, and they wanted a list of everything I sold at every horse show. In other words, they wanted my business plan. They wanted to know what took me 22 years to learn - what to stock and for which show - and I wasn't going to give them that."

"The department has decided to put the contract out for bids in an attempt to get the best price for services on the Fairgrounds," Ag spokesman Jeff Squibb said.

"Previously, the contract was done on an annual basis," Squibb said. "We are looking for a more long-term or multi-year solution, so we have decided to seek competitive bids. Mitchell is certainly entitled to submit a bid for the multi-year contract."

Unlike most state contracts, the vendor pays the state for the right to be the exclusive supplier of feed and bedding. When rental fees and a percentage of his sales are accounted for, Mitchell estimated his company, Mitchell Feed & Bedding, will have given the Agriculture Department about $35,000 in the past year "for the privilege of me being here."

"If somebody else is going to give them more than that, they're going to lose their butt," he said.

Squibb said the company has paid the state $24,067 in the past year, but still owes a percentage on sales of wood shavings for the past five months.

The deadline for prospective vendors to submit offers for the concession was last Friday, but nobody bid on it, Squibb said. The state will seek bids again in mid-November or early December using the same specifications as the first request.

"The next show on the fairgrounds isn't until February, so there's plenty of time to rebid the contract," he said.

The official request for bids specifies a one-year contract with options for three one-year renewals.

"Under the procurement code, it's considered a four-year contract," Squibb said, "so we thought it best to seek competitive bids."

Squibb re-emphasized that Mitchell was welcome to bid, but Mitchell said he doesn't expect to submit an offer the second time around, either, because the specifications won't change.

A review of the bid specifications confirmed that the department will require monthly audits of sales, inventories and purchases from suppliers from the successful vendor. Squibb said, however, that the winning bidder could declare that information as proprietary, making it confidential and not subject to - for instance - the Freedom of Information Act.

Mitchell said the feed and bedding company isn't his only business.

"I'll go home and farm," he said. "It's not like I'm going to have nothing to do. I've got 250 head of cattle at home" on his acreage near Athens, where he also grows much of the hay and straw he sold at the Fairgrounds.

"I've been here 22 years, and I've done a good job," Mitchell said. "I can go away and be quite content that I did the best job possible, and there's going to be a lot of people miss me."

One of those will be Tommra Luparell, executive director of the Illinois Motorcycle Dealers Association. Along with supplying feed and bedding for animals, Mitchell's company also provides 2,500 bales of straw for the Springfield Mile and other motorcycle races the association promotes at the Fairgrounds each Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend.

"Those bales are what keep the riders safe when they crash and go towards the wall, so that's a very important thing for us," she said.

She worried that someone else might not do as good of a job.

"Will they know how to stack them on the walls in the safety way that Bill's been trained and taught to do?" she asked.

"The straw is something we rely on him to do, and he's never let us down," she said. "I certainly hope they rethink this. They're not going to find anybody better."

Dana Heupel can be reached at 788-1518 or dana.heupel@sj-r.com.

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