Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper stated that the system will go forward with its upcoming multimillion-dollar busing contract regardless of issues raised by the state’s inspector basic over its bidding course of.
“BPS transportation staff continues to work to finalize the contract for school bus transportation for the upcoming fiscal year,” Skipper stated, including that she anticipates presenting the contract on the March 1 Boston School Committee assembly. “Through the informed guidance of the Inspector General’s office, we have identified opportunities to clarify and improve contract administration that will be beneficial throughout the term of the contract.”
In her assertion, Skipper seems to reference a letter despatched to BPS by the state Office of the Inspector General, which was obtained by the Herald via a information request. The involvement of the OIG was requested after town’s Finance Commission, a statutorily created metropolis funds watchdog, discovered potential points with the bidding course of for the multimillion-dollar contract in December, calling an expertise requirement “arbitrary, artificially limited competition, and could increase costs to the taxpayers of the City of Boston.”
In that letter, Inspector General Jeff Shapiro shared issues over the system’s bidding course of for bus companies and wrote that the Boston School Committee “and Boston Public Schools should understand that awarding such a contract at this time requires them to proceed at their own risk.”
As acknowledged within the OIG letter, these issues included the requirement that the contractor have “experience working with at least 3 school districts, transit agencies, or specialty districts with a fleet at least 50% of the size of the BPS fleet,” which seemed to be an arbitrarily excessive threshold that restricted viable competitors amongst contractors.
BPS has a fleet of 736 complete buses, however makes use of 624 of them day by day, in line with the letter, which might make for a required system fleet expertise flooring of 312 buses. This implies that not even Student Transportation of America, the nation’s third-largest operator, made the grade.
BPS rapidly maintained they have been “confident” within the course of.
Despite 4 transportation contracting corporations attending the obligatory walkthrough final September, just one firm — the present contractor Transdev — submitted a bid, which totaled $17.5 million for for a five-year time period, with an possibility for 3 one-year extensions. As the only real bid, regardless of the OIG letter’s issues that not even it appeared to satisfy the requirement of servicing three methods with the mandatory fleet measurement, Transdev was routinely awarded the contract.
The contract is about to take impact this fall.
The OIG didn’t make a dedication about any violation of procurement regulation. The letter did notice town has authorized discretion “to cancel a procurement if the governmental body determines it is in its best interest, if for instance, there are flaws in the process.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”