Talk of a new terminal at Kansas City International Airport has been around for years. Now that the most recent deadline for proposals is three days away, 41 Action News wanted to take a closer look at the process.
July 27 is the deadline for firms to submit their bids. August 10 is the deadline for those firms to turn in financial information.
The Kansas City City Council will have two weeks to vote to get the issue on the November ballot.
Councilman Jermaine Reed, who co-chairs the committee, sent this statement:
"The Mayor and City Council have went to great lengths to extend the deadline and make sure this process is transparent. We hope with the process in place and the timelines upcoming, we are going to have some great proposals to review and select from."
Councilman Quinton Lucas says he understands where the initial skepticism came from.
"Because the way we initially started it didn't seem like we would be as transparent as we could," said Lucas. "We've changed the process a few times but now we're trying to make sure that anybody who wants to take a look at this bid can and has a chance to be fully evaluated by city council."
Ron Coker, Senior Vice President with Burns & McDonnell, said, "It's not very often that you get to take a proposal like that straight to the voters and see if they agree with you so to us it's the ultimate in transparency."
When it comes to how the bids will be evaluated and scored, Lucas said, "The first part is going to be what's the value? Second part is how do you work with local businesses? Third part is how do you work with the airlines and I think we're going to be looking at track record."
The Request for Qualifications and Proposals online says, "The City may change criteria, criteria weights and rankings at any time."
Read the full document here:
The city will announce how many proposals it received on Thursday.
