Council rejects bid waiver for school bus contract
Tonight the Council voted against waiving the school bus contract bid. Here's the MRJs Jesse Buchanan:
The Town Council failed to approve a transportation contract bid waiver Wednesday in 4 to 3 vote. Republican councilors Tom Ruocco, Tim Slocum, Tim White and Democratic councilor Sheldon Dill voted against the bid waiver while Democratic councilors Matt Altieri, Michael Ecke and Matt Hall voted for it...
During the meeting, Dill asked Florio if it was possible that the town could save money by going out to bid. Florio responded yes.
And for some additional insight on my vote, the following is some of the information I requested from the CT Conference of Municipalities. This spreadsheet details some incomplete data about contractual increases in existing contracts. (The Type 2 and Type 3 buses are special ed buses):
And this information is related to responses from school districts that actually went out to bid in the past six months or so:
Unfortunately, only Portland gave the data I wanted to see. But hey... these responses were on a volunteer basis... so any information is better than no information. Finally, I got this data around 1pm today. Then later in the day I called CCM and they had gotten one last piece of data - Manchester recently went out to bid on a school transportation contract and accepted a two year proposal with 3% increases in each of the two years.
Based on the data previously provided by the Superintendent and the above data, I felt the information indicated both higher costs and lower costs... and ultimately the best thing to do was to bid the contract.
I really do appreciate Matt Hall's comments though about the value of existing service and putting one's kids on the bus in the morning.
Tim White
6 comments:
Good decision to go out to bid--NOBODY wants to lose business in today's economy; From the Florio perspective, "change management"--the amount of work HE will have to do if another vendor is selcted, will increase. It's called being "complacent"!!!
RE: Dill asked Florio if it was possible that the town could save money by going out to bid. Florio responded yes.
Then Altieri, Ecke, and Hall voted for a no-bid contract anyway. Figures: the three spendaholics.
I didnt see the 10%+ increases that the BOE was talking about.
And at this same meeting I learned that the TM has cut the bulky waste pick up from the budget. We only have that every other year now and we just had one so I didn't even think we were scheduled for one in 09/10. How can you cut out something that wouldn't be in the budget numbers anyway?
BTW - I think they should KEEP the bulky waste pick up and maybe reduce the number of cars they give to town employees. The bulky waste pick up at least benefits all the taxpayers - but the cars for employees doesn't benefit any taxpayers.
reduce the number of cars they give to town employees
And what about the "conferences & seminars?" This year one of them is in the favorite foreign city of UTHs Cindy!
Although their vaunted five-vote Rubber Stamp is gone... they'll still try mightily to take direction from staff.
Tim White: Request from the TM a $$ listing of 2008 expenses by Town Employee, stratified high $ to low$, to see how much and where our Town expense money is going. We use that in our business (Fortune 250 Company). You'll be ASTOUNDED to see where & how much $$ it is!!! (I'll bet the TM will BALK at providing this to you!!!
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