New Haven Independent

In a decision approved at Tuesday’s board meeting, the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) heeded Dan Derrico (pictured)’s suggestion and dropped the contractor it had hired to do the job. The board hired Derrico’s company instead.

Conducting a more thorough search through legal actions pending against the company that received the contract, DaVinci Development LLC, the authority found “claims brought into question their financial capacity,” said Executive Director Jimmy Miller.

HANH had awarded DaVinci the contract for its bid of $114,000, choosing the lowest bidder over Derrico’s Total Fence Company, which offered $131,000. At Derrico’s prompting, HANH revisited the bid and changed its mind.

Why the change-up? At first pass, staff had only done a small claims check on DaVinci, explained Miller. They went back and did a full search of all legal actions, and found that “the preponderance of evidence here was that we deemed the contractors to be non-responsible for this bid.”