Hartland liquor outlet dispute headed to court

A company that conducted a traffic study in Hartland for N.B. Liquor that was a key element in the awarding of an agency store in the community warned a mid-winter car count in the summer tourist town might skew results, court documents show.

"Traffic volumes observed in January are typically less than during other months of the year, especially compared to the summer months," wrote Brendan McPhee of CBCL Ltd., the engineering consulting company that conducted the Hartland traffic count.

"This would be especially true as Hartland is home to the World's Longest Covered Bridge, which is a well-known tourist attraction."

A dispute over the awarding of the N.B. Liquor agency outlet in Hartlandis headed to court next month, with duelling traffic counts likely to be the central issue.

In April, N.B. Liquor moved its lucrative agency franchise from a traditional spot near Hartland's famed covered bridge to the local Hartland Irving station and Valu Foods outlet, about one kilometre upriver.

The move triggered opposition in the town and accusations by Peter Cook, the owner of the Freshmart grocery store that lost the outlet, of political manoeuvresand corporate cronyism.

Cook, a prominent Liberal in Carleton County, had the franchise but lost a competition to keep it after N.B. Liquor put the contract up for open bidding.

Cook disputes bid count

A 100-point score card N.B. Liquor used to grade two bids it receivedappeared to show Cook was beaten easily, 96.1 to 88.25.

Cook disputes that count and believes N.B. Liquor's politically appointed board of directors, headed by prominent Progressive Conservative and one-time Irving Oil employee John Correia, played a role in the outcome.

"It was either manipulated on purpose, which I believe, or if nothing else, it's pure incompetence," Cook said this week.

"I was cheated."

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N.B. Liquor has declined to comment publicly on the dispute, but in an affidavit filed with the Court of Queen's Bench vice-president Alan Sullivan said Correia had no involvement in the evaluation process and his past associations are irrelevant to Cook's losing the bid.

"Mr. Correia's previous or current roles with ANBL or other companies had no effect on the fact the Applicant scored lower in the RFP process than Valu Foods," Sullivan'saffidavit said.

Traffic count most contentious issue

A number of issues are disputed by Cook in N.B. Liquor's scoring of the two bids, but a traffic count that was worth 30 points in the competition more than any other element has emerged as the most contentious.

N.B. Liquor's traffic study was conducted over 48 hours on a Tuesday and Wednesday during the second week of January this year, and showed vehiclespassing the Irving station to be within 95 per cent of the number going past Cook's store.

Cook disputes that count because his store can be reached by multiple streets running in front of and behindhis building,and because traffic was measured on only one street.

Although N.B. Liquor's request for proposalssays scoring of the traffic count will be "based on vehicle traffic going past the proponents place of business," correspondence filed in court shows the consultant believed the job was to measure only traffic travelling on Main Street.

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"We understand the main objective is to obtain a comparison between the daily Main Street traffic volumes," wrote Mark MacDonald, CBCL's senior transportation engineer.

Cook said beyond that issue, summer traffic in downtown Hartland is much higher than in winter and the selection of two mid-week days in January to do a study guaranteed a flawed result.

To make that point, Cook hired Roy Consultants of Moncton, a frequent engineering contractor to the New Brunswick department of transportation and infrastructure, to conduct a second traffic study over five days in mid-August.

Second study conducted in mid-August

That study,authored by civil engineer Jrmie Aub, counted 29 per cent more vehicles passing in front of Cook's location on Main Street than the Irving location,using counters in similar locations toN.B. Liquor's count.

But the difference jumped to 111 per cent more passing near Cook's store by adding in a count of cars using a second route.

In his report, Aub conceded that counting traffic is not a perfect science.

"The data area is not perfectly sealed, and vehicles may enter and exit the system freely without being captured by traffic counting devices," he wrote.

Cook has softened one claim made in an early affidavit: the street in front his store was blocked for a time by roadwork while N.B. Liquor's traffic count was underway.

He concedes now that he had the dates of the traffic count wrong.

On its scorecard, N.B. Liquor graded the traffic count 30 to 28.6 in Cook's favour because of the slight difference in its numbers.

Cook feels his study shows the traffic score should have been at worst 30 to 15 in his favour, more than enough to merit his overall bid winning, his bid scored 9 points lower on the rest of the elements.

"I feel we have a chance, and a good chance, that a judge could overrule it," he said.

Both sides are scheduled to be in court in Fredericton on Nov. 9.