In view of the necessity to repair the Drinking Water service of the municipality and the need of investment and the update of the network, it was agreed that the most correct and most profitable decision for the village was to put out the management of the water to contract. This way, a company, the best, the most capable, the one selected in a public, transparent and legal contest would take charge of the investments and necessary updates in the service of the Drinking Water of Els Poblets.
For this reason, for 5 months we worked drawing up the Terms of Contract, that is to say, the rules of the contest, indicating the requirements of the offers of the companies that take part in the contest. The specifications were approved by absolute majority and also there were named an experts' committee as is required by the law of public contracts for this type of authorization. All this protected by the report of the secretary-adminstrator of the town hall, making sure the specifications were completely legal and transparent.
The experts' committee consisted of a top civil engineer, another middle grade engineer of public works, and an inspector of another town hall who is licensed in Economics. The secretary-administrator of the Town hall of Els Poblets formed part of the Contracting Board, with a voice and vote.
The terms of contract asked the companies to study the facilities, the network, the needs of both and they were requested to present a plan in case they were the company selected.
Amongst other things they were asked to indicate to us the investments and other works that they would do to improve the service and how they were would solve the problems of the water losses in the tubes that make up the network of drinking water of the municipality. All this fitted into the conditions of the contract and without raising the tariffs and with the corresponding saving throughout 25 years
Afterwards the technicians who formed the experts' committee did the work entrusted by the plenary meeting which was to value the proposals of 4 companies that had presented a tender.
As soon as all the projects were analyzed and the evaluation of every company was completed this is when the problem arose. Mr. Simarro was not in accord and had doubts with the report of the experts' committee.
After having approved the conditions of the contract and the election of the members of the experts' committee, Simarro had doubts. He contributed a report made by an external adviser which contradicted the evaluations of the technicians and was proposing, as a better candidate, the company that was placed fourth and last according to the experts’ committee.
