Bus Violations Addressed—

Council Considering Resolution, Support For Owner-Operators

By John Voket

Legislative Council member Kathryn Fetchick is asking the council to consider going to bat for the 80-year-old owner-operators school bus system. The Board of Education is currently considering replacing the independent owner-operators, having soliciting competing bids from several large school bus companies.

Before the August 3 council meeting adjourned, Ms Fetchick and council Vice Chair Mary Ann Jacob both said the public outcry in support of the local business people, and against what is described as a cost-saving measure by the school board, was too widespread for the council to remain on the sidelines of the debate.

As a result, council Chairman Jeff Capeci will likely call a special meeting of the council August 10. That meeting could result in no action, generate a recommendation for a council resolution of support for the owner-operators, or some other type of action or statement that represents the sentiment of the officials and their constituents.

Ms Fetchick, who was serving as vice chair for the Board of Education during the last school bus contract process, said everywhere she goes in town residents are confronting her and asking why the school district is “trying to throw out the owner-operators.”

“I realize it’s a financial issue, but it’s a quality of life issue, it’s a fairness issue,” Ms Fetchick said. “There should be a balance between financial needs and the quality of life.”

She pointed out that the drivers offered a voluntary pay cut of $200,000 per year for the first two years of a contract extension when the town and district were facing some of the most serious budget cutting implications, they supplied free rides for Newtown High School promgoers to ensure their safety, and several owner-operators responded immediately to a call for help when the 2010 Relay For Life had to be evacuated because of an approaching storm.

Councilman Robert Merola also noted that the owner-operators have volunteered to conduct several food drives, contributing busloads of donations to Newtown’s food pantries.

At the same time, Ms Fetchick said the council should work to define and illustrate the monetary value or the delta between the lowest private bus company bid and the owner-operators’ collective bid, “to quantify what the quality of life cost is.”

Many Support O-Os

She pointed out that during school board negotiations for supplemental bus services with Newtown-based MTM Transportation, hundreds of people came out to support the local company.

“We can’t get people to come out to budget meetings, but hundreds of them came out to support the owner-operators,” Ms Fetchick said.

Councilman Kevin Fitzgerald said his children ride with owner-operators, and that he was hoping that their bid would be closer to that of the private companies.

“I’m concerned about how you put a dollar value behind added value when the gap in the bid is so great,” he said. “If it was my budget, I might not make the decision everyone would like.”

Vice Chair Mary Ann Jacob said providers of such an incumbent service should be treated better by top ranking district administrators. Ms Jacob said that comments being made by district administrators about a move to a private company being part of structural changes called for by local officials are inaccurate.

“This isn’t structural change, this is beating the heck out of your vendors,” Ms Jacob said.

Councilman Gary Davis warned that the council should also guarantee the school board would not be penalized at budget time if the eventual decision was made to keep the owner-operator system in place at a higher cost.

“We can save the owner-operators, but when the budget rolls around we need to find the money somewhere else,” Mr Davis said. “We’re trying to micromanage the education budget. If we make a resolution, we are skewing how that budget should be adjusted.

Mr Davis said the council should work to “get the Board of Education off the hook instead of putting the squeeze on them.”

Ms Jacob said she cannot blame the school board, because she believes its members are not being given accurate information by school administrators who want to make a change to a private bus company. Ms Fetchick said there is evidence supporting that on the district’s own website, where a list of questions and answers about the school bus bids includes an outline of the benefits of a change in providers.

Mr Capeci concluded that he will call a special meeting of the council which could take action to advise the full council when it meets again August 17. Mr Capeci said he will also determine if there should be a joint meeting with the school board.

Just before the council meeting, The Bee received a statement from Board of Education Chairman William Hart (available in its entirety online at NewtownBee.com in “Source Files” under Board of Education) inviting the public to meet and hear from all the bus bidders during a special meeting Saturday, August 20, at Newtown High School. He also stated that the community is currently paying a premium for the owner-operators that is 33 percent higher than the “market rate” for transportation services.

“Over the past several years, the Newtown taxpayers have clearly spoken about the need for fiscal responsibility, with school budget increases below the rate of inflation for the last three years,” Mr Hart wrote. “Could the district have eliminated the roughly $600,000 premium it is paying under the current bus service contract for the 2012 Fiscal Year, the cuts in educational assistants and other staff that were made after the first budget referendum might have been avoided.”

Many Violations Downplayed

In related news, approximately 90 of the 93 violations flagged by the school district business manager, who highlighted 25 owner-operator violations forcing buses out of service in 2009 during a recent Board of Education presentation, did not involve mechanical operations that would compromise the lives or safety of students on board, according to local mechanic and school bus company co-owner Tom Adams.

Mr Adams, who is a partner in MTM Transportation, a current school bus provider for the Newtown district, reviewed 93 violations that were collected by district Business Manager Ronald Bienkowski from a Hartford Courant newspaper database. Mr Bienkowski presented the data to illustrate his point that nearly eight out of ten (78.13 percent) local owner-operator buses were taken out of service that year for a mechanical violation.

But Mr Adams, in reviewing each violation available in the database, said many of the out-of-service violations involved mid-school-year changes to tire load specifications and stairwell heater recalls that had not been corrected or received by the owners.

According to the district’s documentation, 11 of the 25 out-of-service violations involved the classification upgrade of school bus tires. An additional five took buses out of service because the owner had not received or responded to the heater fan recall.

There are also some inconsistencies in the database, where some buses were taken out of service for not having a loud enough back-up alert, or emergency window and door alarms deactivated, while other buses with the same violations were kept in service.

Mr Adams noted one case where a bus had passed numerous previous inspections, before finally being cited in 2009 with not upgrading to a new class of seat belts. Among the lesser violations were things like two bus first aid kits missing a package of 4-inch compresses, a windshield wiper arm that didn’t return flush to the window frame, a noisy heater, and one driver cited for having pictures posted on the interior rear-view mirror.

The local bus company owner said he could only identify three of the 93 violations that could compromise or affect the mechanical operation of the bus involved: a leaking air hose supplying pressure to one of the bus brakes, a warning light indicating a redundant bus antilock brake system may be inoperative, and inoperative red warning flashers that signal approaching drivers that the bus is discharging passengers.

He also noted one brake air pressure violation where the bus was not taken out of service.

Concerns About Survey

Town Finance Director Robert Tait, who serves on an ad-hoc panel advising the school board, has also taken issue with a survey he and four other volunteers were asked to complete, which in effect, scored each of the bidders including the owner-operators on various criteria. Those scores were then transposed into a graph by Mr Bienkowski that showed each volunteer scored the owner-operators lowest and the All-Star Transportation company highest.

“None of the questions were weighted to their importance,” Mr Tait said. “I recommended to Ron [Bienkowski] to not add up the scores, but to evaluate each bidder independently.”

Mr Tait said he and fellow panel members, Mr Bienkowski, school board member Keith Alexander, Education Connection Transportation Manager Bert Hughes, and Newtown’s Director of Pupil Personnel Services Michael Regan, were also able to make comments about the survey to help qualify their scores.

“For example, in the ‘overall impression’ category I wrote that the owner-operators were apprehensive of the process, while the other companies [were represented by] professional sales people who do these presentations all the time.”

The Bee asked to see copies of the surveys to review the scores and comments, but Mr Bienkowski declined to provide them, stating that district counsel indicated they were not public documents even though they were part of documentation already reported (minus individual comments) publicly by Mr Bienkowski to the Board of Education.