School Board Delays Decision

On MTM Contract

By Eliza Hallabeck

After an afternoon meeting between members of the school district, members of the Board of Education, and consultants regarding a transportation contract that went out to bid recently as a request for proposal, the school board decided to postpone the award of the contract for one week at its meeting later that night on Tuesday, April 21.

The last time the contract, held by local fleet operator MTM Transportation, went out to bid was six years ago. The contract was written for five years, but was held over for one year last year.

“Transportation services represent the third largest object category of expenses in the Board of Education’s budget,” said Ronald Bienkowski, director of business for the school district. 

“The district did a good job getting the word out in the industry,” said Mark Walsh, an outside consultant with Transportation Advisory Services who attended both meetings on Tuesday and prepared a review and recommendation for the school board. He added that a good number of contractors responded to the bids, and, for the size of the district, five proposals, he said, was good.

Mr Walsh said it is in a district’s favor to pull in as many good bids as possible in order to receive the best overall response on a bid.

Of the five proposals, three companies bid costs for the four different packages of the contract lower than the other contenders. All-Star Transportation, based out of Torrington, offered the lowest bid for the largest portion of the contract, the Base In District, or majority of the bus routes, including private schools and special needs students in the public school district. MTM Transportation, the current provider and a town-based company, offered the lowest price on two of the four packages, transportation for the school year out of district students and transportation for out of district students overall. MTM Transportation was also the lowest bidder for the entire contract, with $10,623,786 as an overall cost for the transportation contract. All-Star Transportation offered a cost of $10,990,465 for its overall total of the contract.

Another company, First Student, bid the lowest on the package for transportation during the summer in the school district.

During Tuesday’s afternoon meeting, held at the district’s offices on Peck’s Lane, Mr Walsh warned the board members and district administrators present that contractors interested in the bid asked him if Newtown was serious.

“It was my statement to them that I thought Newtown was serious,” he said, and added that the district seemed to really be looking for good proposals. He also reminded the board that it had chosen MTM for the contract six years ago when it had not been the lowest bidder — something not lost on firms as they try to judge the seriousness of a request for proposals (RFP).

Instead of awarding the full contract to the lowest bidder, MTM Transportation, Mr Walsh and Mr Bienkowski both independently recommended to the school board to split the award of the contract and give the largest portion, the routes for private schools and special needs students in the entire school district, to All-Star, and the remainder of the contract to MTM. This, they both agreed, would be most beneficial to the town, saving the school district $362,826, instead of giving the full contract to MTM.

Mr Walsh also said during the afternoon meeting that MTM had not submitted a consent of surety that would demonstrate its ability to acquire a performance bond, as he also wrote in a memo to the district. At the Board of Education’s regular meeting later that night, Mr Walsh and the district’s attorney Floyd Dugas told the board the paperwork submitted to the district by MTM was not enough to qualify as a consent of surety.

Mr Dugas also said having the documentation is important to moving forward in the process.

Concerns brought up during the school board’s meeting included All-Star’s ability to acquire land for a base in town, and the age of buses in MTM’s fleet. MTM, either through a consultant or one of the co-owners, indicated that only spare buses are over the age qualifications. The fleet of buses All-Star would acquire if awarded the contract would be all new.

John Dufour, one of the owners of All-Star, answered when school board Chair Elaine McClure asked if there was anything stated wrongly or if he would like to say anything further.

“We are a good bus company, and anything negative that might have been said, I disagree with,” said Mr Dufour. He said Newtown does have a unique situation in the fact that it is run primarily by owner/operators, the contracted individual drivers who transport the district students, and said All-Star has never made efforts to replace a transportation system like that. He also acknowledged that if the school board choose to stay with the model in place, then it should.

“I was led to believe that it was probably going to happen anyway here, and that this was going to be replaced,” said Mr Dufour. “We were encouraged to come here and bid, please come here and bid. We worked for this business manager in the past in another town.”

Mr Walsh told the board that a decision on the award should be timely, because it is late in the year to have to pull together all the requirements needed should the contract be awarded to a company other than MTM.

Although the school board had scheduled a decision on this issue at its meeting Tuesday night, the board decided to table action on the final contract award until next Thursday; the time has not been scheduled by the time this issue of The Bee went to press. The decision was made to in part to give MTM time to supply all required paperwork.

Board member Kathleen Chrystie said she recognizes the board needs to make a decision.

“I know that there is a lot of emotion in the room,” Ms Chrystie said. “I tend to attack business issues without emotion. I would like to strip that emotion away. I would like to look at the facts, and my suggestion to delay the vote is not to put more pressure on the system. Or to do anything else other than to ensure to the citizens of Newtown that we are making the right decision.”

Board member Richard Gaines pointed out that the bid package was split in four to give the town of Newtown the greatest possible savings.

“If we are to vote tonight I would move that the MTM contract not be considered as it did not come up and meet the requirements of the RFP,” said Mr Gaines, and added that in consideration he agreed to table the decision for one week.

“Until we have all the requirements of the bid met, I don’t think we can consider that RFP as part of this package,” said Mr Gaines. “In which case I would have to vote for a split between All-Star and First Student. It is not an option I would like to pursue.”

The board voted unanimously to table the decision until next Thursday.