When it comes to the Lincoln Road mall, property owners, tenants, Miami Beach administrators and elected officials seem to agree on one thing: The city’s maintenance of the historic promenade isn’t up to snuff.

Sidewalks are dirty. Landscaping has been neglected. And in general, the conditions in the prominent promenade aren’t on par with the mall’s national reputation.

But with a high-profile developer lobbying Wednesday for a long-debated, estimated $3 million-a-year deal to privatize the cleaning of walkways, painting of facades and control of security, commissioners instead decided after more than two hours of tense debate to send the controversial contract out to bid.

“We have now wasted 18 months,” Robert Wennett, whose UIA Management could have begun official negotiations for the contract with enough support Wednesday, told commissioners. “The property owners have said we want action. We want action now.”

Wennett and a large contingent of land owners and tenants contend that Lincoln Road, due to poor upkeep, is losing ground to emerging retail South Florida complexes like Mary Brickell Village.

A majority of the city’s seven commissioners agreed.

But Wennett, the developer behind the lauded 1111 Lincoln Rd. mixed-use parking garage and new 1100 block of Lincoln Road, needed five votes to move forward. He got only four, with Commissioners Michael Gongora, Jonah Wolfson and Deede Weithorn saying other private interests should have received an opportunity to vie for the deal.

“It concerns me a little bit that we say we’ve not done an adequate job maintaining Lincoln Road so we need to privatize it,” Gongora said.

The no-bid nature of the proposed contract has made it controversial for months.

The genesis of the proposal came through Wennett’s development agreement with the city as part of a public-private partnership through which Miami Beach gave Wennett roughly $6 million to develop the 1100 block. The original January 2010 agreement called for Wennett to maintain the new block and contained a provision that allowed the city to request Wennett expand his Lincoln Road services and amend the contract if he performed well.

That contract runs through 2020 and gives Wennett a management fee of 15 percent, putting the contract’s overall, estimated value at roughly $24 million.

City Manager Jorge Gonzalez, however, said those details were informal and could be overhauled through new negotiations. Wennett also suggested commissioners simply give him a one-year test run.

Still, allegations that the proposed contract was a back-room deal led commissioners to request a Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office probe in September. The investigation remains open.

And last week, the city’s largest public employee union began airing a commercial on Atlantic Broadband slamming Gonzalez and Wennett.

“Do your job,” Richard McKinnon, Communications Workers of America president, yelled at Mayor Matti Herrera Bower while urging the city hire an independent investigator to examine the handling of the maintenance contract.

After the meeting, Wennett blamed union politics on the commission’s decision to bid out the contract. He noted that Wolfson and Weithorn both sit on the city’s commission finance committee, which discussed the contract twice, and never suggested it be bid out.

Some property owners, like Mel Schlesser, were equally frustrated, saying Lincoln Road stakeholders pay a bounty in taxes and want more control in how their promenade is kept.

“We can do it better than anybody else because we have the stakes in it,” Schlesser said. “I as a landowner am now paying more than $400,000 in taxes, which doubled from last year.”

Commissioners expect to vote on a request for proposals next month.

It’s up to the city to maintain Lincoln Road in the meantime.