All contracts for the construction, operation or maintenance of an energy production facility and all contracts authorized by § 7-54-105(a)(3) shall be exempted from any applicable competitive bidding laws of this state that shall be applicable to a municipality, and such ordinances or resolutions of any municipality that require competitive bidding, whenever:
(1) The governing body of a municipality shall find and determine:
(A)
(i) It is unlikely that such exemption will encourage favoritism in the awarding of such contracts or substantially diminish competition for such contracts;
(ii) The awarding of such contracts pursuant to the exemption will result in substantial cost savings to the contracting municipality. In making such finding, the governing body of a municipality may consider the type, cost, amount of the contract, number of persons available to bid and such other factors the governing body of a municipality may deem appropriate;
(B) That such exemption will preserve or increase employment within its boundaries or otherwise promote the local economy; or
(C) Emergency conditions, as so determined by the governing body of a municipality, require the prompt execution of such contracts; and
(2) The governing body of a municipality shall find and determine that the following alternative procedure should be used:
(A) Quotations and other relevant information pertaining to the proposed contract shall be solicited through a request for proposals prepared by the municipality, which shall be spread upon the minutes and be made a public record of the municipality;
(B) The award of such contract may be made to a responsive and responsible vendor whose proposal is determined by the proposing municipality to be the best evaluated offer resulting from negotiation and taking into consideration the relative importance of price and other evaluation factors set forth in the request for proposals;
(C) If provided in the request for proposals, the responding proposal shall be opened so as to avoid disclosure of contents to competing offerors and kept secret during the process of negotiation. However, all proposals that have been submitted shall be open for public inspection after the contract is awarded, except for trade secrets and confidential information contained in the proposals and identified as such; and
(D) As provided in the request for proposals and under rules adopted by the municipality, discussions may be conducted with responsible offerors who submit proposals determined to be reasonably susceptible of being selected for award. Offerors must be accorded fair treatment with respect to any opportunity for discussion and revision of proposals, and revisions may be permitted after submission and before award for the purpose of obtaining the best and final offers.
