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In Vermont, London based First Student Ryder school bus
contractor Ryder raises busing cost 32%
(property taxes later rose 21%...) Now, businessmen on Duval County FL school board's bus contractor evaluation committee: ‘FLAWED' BID PROCESS |
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"PICKUPGAME"
Editorial 5/8/2001 Folio Weekly Jacksonville FL http://www.folioweekly.com/ [Was lead editorial; now is located in online archives section] If the controversy swirling around the Duval County school bus mess has you confused, you're not alone. The School Board, Superintendent John Fryer, Mayor John Delaney and the General Counsel's Office (among others) have all offered opinions on how school transportation contracts should be awarded. Was the process fair or fraudulent? Will the savings national companies promise in the short run survive the long haul? And what about an unelected general counsel, Rick Mullaney, exerting "supreme" authority over decisions of an elected School Board? Perhaps Art Shad can shed some light on the situation. The gregarious, 33-year-old certified financial planner and father of two was part of the seven-member School Transportation Services Evaluation Committee that reviewed and ranked bids from 11 local and national firms competing for a handful of countywide bus contracts. As one of two businessmen assigned to the group, Shad thought his financial acumen would come in handy as the committee sifted through the complex proposals. It wasn't long, however, before Shad and the committee's other business representative, Lewis Siplin, president of Siplin Enterprises Inc., realized that their expertise wasn't needed: Many important decisions had already been made by school district staff. The two men began to question the integrity of the process, and whether the administration was greasing the skids for out-of-state contractors. Shad says their concerns were validated by a conversation he had with Superintendent Fryer several days after the committee wrapped up its work. Shad says Fryer called him at home late one Monday evening and launched into a diatribe against the local bus contractors, who have been transporting Duval County students for more than 50 years. Fryer claimed the local contractors were part of a "fiefdom" that "strong-armed" school officials at every opportunity. Shad says the superintendent complained that campaign contributions from bus operators influenced the votes of School Board members, and implied that the quicker the district was rid of the local companies, the better. "I had never really spoken with Mr. Fryer, so the call surprised me," Shad says. After hearing Fryer rail against local contractors, Shad became convinced that the process was, at best, deeply flawed — and, at worst, rigged by school administrators. Shad outlined his concerns in an April 5 letter to the School Board, and his complaints were echoed by several members when the board voted 5-1 last week to throw out all bus contracts and begin the process anew. (That decision was quickly reversed by Mullaney, setting the stage for what could be a precedent-setting court battle.) Shad's suspicions were first aroused when members of the evaluation committee were given less than 48 hours to digest proposals filed by the 11 firms — documents that totaled more than 1,000 pages. [COMMITTEE EVALUATION NUMBERS, FILLED IN BY FRYER's STAFF] When it came time to rank the bids (using a scoring system that ranked companies by price, safety record, minority participation and a half-dozen other factors), Shad discovered that a significant portion of the evaluation forms had been filled out in advance by district administrators. (School officials said they had "objectively" ranked the bids based on price, assigning almost 40 percent of the score before the evaluation committee ever met.) Shad was willing to give administrators the benefit of the doubt, but as the process moved along, more problems emerged. According to Shad, several presentations made to the committee by school officials and "independent" consultants were skewed in favor of the national companies. [DOLLAR NUMBERS CHANGED AFTER SUBMISSION BY LONDON CONTRACTORS] High-ranking school administrators (who, according to bid guidelines, were only supposed to "advise" and assist the committee) filled out evaluation forms that, in several cases, low-balled local contractors. Bothered by the committee's direction, Shad took a closer look at the prices the companies bid and discovered that the math was seriously flawed. While local contractors calculated their bid price based on a five-year average, the nationals submitted a flat, one-year price. "It was like comparing apples and oranges ... the numbers didn't match up," Shad says. "We could have helped, but the committee wasn't allowed to deal with the pricing. " According to Shad, the faulty numbers cost at least one local company a contract (for students in the county's northwest district). "Please know that I came into this process with an open mind, as a proud member of this community, as the father of two young sons and with an understanding of the requirements of the [School Board] to be financially responsible," Shad wrote in his April 5 letter. "In summary, I have doubt[s] about the integrity of this process. This doubt is shared by the only other non-school system employee on the evaluation committee." It's an opinion also shared by five of six School Board members. Whether that matters in a consolidated government ruled by the General Counsel's Office will likely be decided in a court of law. |
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