The electric shuttle service, which ran a popular pilot program moving riders around the Grove for free, says it lost out on a new two-year contract because of a deeply flawed and unfair bidding process.
A battery-charged fight is brewing in the streets of Coconut Grove over who gets to help relieve the central business district of its traffic woes.
Freebee, a Miami-based on-demand transit provider, is crying foul after the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District (BID) tapped a competitor – Fort Lauderdale’s Circuit – to ferry riders around the Grove’s bustling business corridor. The decision, Freebee executives say, is a snub that will cost taxpayers money.
For years, South Florida cities have sought to ease congestion and parking headaches by deploying fleets of electric vehicles, offering residents and visitors rides for free or for a nominal fare.
Earlier this year the Coconut Grove BID – a semi-autonomous city agency – selected Circuit to provide these services for the next two years by “piggybacking” on an existing contract the company holds with the City of Hollywood.
The move was designed to expedite the process as the Grove faces the looming closure of a key parking lot adjacent to the Coconut Grove Playhouse.
But Freebee, which ran a pilot program for on-demand transit service in the Grove from 2018 to 2020, says the BID’s procurement process was anything but transparent.
“We were never contacted by the BID and were never given the opportunity to bid or submit a proposal,” Freebee CEO Jason Spiegel wrote in a June 2 email to BID executive director Mark Burns, echoing concerns he’s voiced to city officials and the Spotlight. “This is deeply concerning, especially given our proven track record in Coconut Grove and the fact that our past pricing was less than one-third of what is currently being considered.”
According to Burns and Miami District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo, who chairs the BID, Circuit is offering the best price and the best service.
According to city documents reviewed by the Spotlight, Circuit submitted a bid in 2024 to provide service featuring three electric golf carts and two electric SUVs for $710,346 annually over a two-year contract.
But in a city memo in support of awarding the contract to Circuit – which city commissioners will vote on Thursday – BID officials describe an agreement to offset the cost by charging users up to $2 per ride. As a result, the contracted amount drops to $605,124 the first year and $623,278 the second.
Freebee’s proposal, submitted in 2023 when then-District 2 Commissioner Sabina Covo chaired the BID and before Burns was hired, was for $658,050 a year – lower than Circuit’s initial bid but higher when the user-fare subsidies were factored in.
In a recent interview, Spiegel explained that Freebee’s proposal was tailored to Covo’s request for a fare-free service, which increased costs. Had the BID issued an apples-to-apples competition, Spiegel insists, Freebee could have undercut Circuit’s price by more than $130,000 annually.
“If it had been a fair bid process and there had been an RFP, we would be a fair loser” if the Circuit came out on top, Spiegel said. “But they didn’t give us a shot.”
At the heart of Freebee’s complaint is the decision by the BID and city to tap into a deal Circuit has with the City of Hollywood – a state-sanctioned procurement shortcut that allows municipalities to piggyback onto existing, competitively bid contracts. Freebee executives say that while Hollywood may have followed a sound bidding process, Coconut Grove’s add-on portion did not.
Pardo objects, insisting the bidding process for the Grove’s two-year deal was open and fair. In a video posted to Instagram, sitting alongside Burns, Pardo responded to concerns expressed during the May 22 city commission meeting’s public comment period by the dozen or so speakers – four of them Freebee employees – who criticized city officials for a flawed bidding process.
“We heard some discussion at the last commission meeting between Freebee and Circuit and a no-bid contract, and we just really wanted to clarify,” Pardo said in the video. “When a contract is competitively procured [by way of a] piggyback, [it] has to follow state statutes and has a very extensive list in order to qualify as a piggyback, which is actually what happened with the Circuit contract.”
Burns added, “We received bids from both [companies]. We thought the Circuit bid was the better of the two. Then [the city’s procurement office] went out and found a contract that could be piggybacked upon, that was competitively procured in the city of Hollywood.”
But Spiegel calls Pardo’s video misleading because the BID didn’t formally advertise for proposals, nor did it accept any unsolicited ones. He claims Burns simply compared Freebee’s 2023 proposal – crafted under different leadership and conditions – to Circuit’s 2024 bid.
Freebee learned of the Circuit proposal – and the BID’s plan to recommend it – after reviewing the agency’s agenda for its December 2024 meeting.
Since then, Freebee’s overtures have been rebuffed: “I’ve never met Mark Burns or any other people from the BID since 2023,” said Spiegel.
Spiegel maintains that Freebee’s 2023 proposal was based on Covo’s specific requirements, not the BID’s.
“If the BID had been involved, the technology setup and pricing structure would have been significantly different and more closely aligned with what we previously provided the BID,” Spiegel wrote in his email to Burns.
Pardo, in an interview with the Spotlight, pushes back on suggestions of wrongdoing, noting that Freebee presently benefits from its own “piggyback” arrangement, on a ride-sharing contract in Miami’s District 1 linked to a vendor in the City of Sunrise.
“Nobody came to the city commission mounting campaigns about that,” Pardo quips.
Pardo also accuses Freebee of politicizing what should be a simple procurement contract, claiming that his staff is hearing reports that Grove residents are feeling pressured to publicly protest the BID’s decision.
“These are the tactics being applied,” Pardo said. “I think what Freebee would like is for us to have gone back and rebid it for them. It’s been this whole campaign that is really kind of leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths.”
Not true, counters Spiegel. Residents are simply clamoring for Freebee’s full-time return since its original pilot program ended in 2020.
“We’ve had restaurants and businesses reaching out to us for the last five years about when Freebee is coming back,” he said. “Requests for on-demand service have increased since we started the MPA service.”
(Freebee currently provides a separate, fixed-route shuttle service under a contract with the Miami Parking Authority that’s been in place since 2021, running a free shuttle service between Monty’s Coconut Grove and the Coconut Grove Playhouse, making 14 stops along the way).
In a recent interview, Circuit CEO Alexander Esposito declined to address Freebee’s specific grievances but claims his company won the BID’s endorsement for the contract fair and square. “I can’t say exactly why we were selected, but we’re very proud of our technology, team and track record,” he said.
Pardo is similarly impressed, suggesting that once the on-demand service is up and running, residents and business owners will recognize the differences between Freebee and Circuit.
“We chose the better proposal,” Pardo said. “Our job is to get the best deal for our residents. We’re not going to shop around.”
“the fact that our past pricing was less than one-third of what is currently being considered.”
I think there’s an error in Spiegel’s math here. 1/3 of Circuit’s $605k 1st year contract amount is $ 201k. Freebee’s previous bid was $658k. Doesn’t math out.
When Freebie first launched, it offered a highly effective and appreciated service by picking up Coconut Grove residents directly from our homes and transporting us to specific downtown commercial locations — and back again. We loved the convenience and reliability, and we showed our appreciation by tipping generously.
Unfortunately, the current 14-stop loop requires us to drive and find parking somewhere along the route just to access the shuttle. This change defeats the original purpose and has made the service far less useful for us. As a result, we — and many others — no longer use it.
If Freebie’s mission remains “to ease congestion and parking headaches by deploying fleets of electric vehicles, offering residents and visitors rides for free or for a nominal fare,” then the service model needs to return to its original format. The goal should be to allow us to leave our cars at home—not to make us rely on them just to use the service.
We hope you’ll reconsider the structure and restore the functionality that made Freebie such a valued solution for our community.