Bd of Ed Votes To Accept All-Star For Bus Contract

By Eliza Hallabeck

In a 5-1 vote Tuesday, September 6, the Board of Education awarded All-Star Transportation a five-year bus contract that would have the Torrington-based company fulfilling about half of the transportation services in town from 2012 through 2017. Bus routes under consideration in the bid are currently handled by Newtown’s individually contracted owner-operators, whose contract expires just after the end of the school year.

“I think that they clearly plan to be both financially and socially part of this community,” said Board of Education Chair William Hart of the All-Star company. “So, in short, I believe that the board has no choice from the perspectives of safety and cost, community and ethics, but to put our transportation system on a sound businesslike footing.”

Mr Hart and board members Andrew Buzzi, David Nanavaty, Richard Gaines, and Keith Alexander voted in favor of awarding All-Star Transportation the contract. BOE Vice Chair Debbie Leidlein was the only member of the board who voted against the motion.

Member Lillian Bittman was not present for the meeting.

The owner-operator system began in 1934 when the Board of Education first opened bids for transporting Newtown’s students, according to Town Historian Dan Cruson’s Educating Newtown’s Children: A History of Its Schools. The original bid winners were Albert Rasmussen, Jacob Nezvesky, Jesse C. Lewis, and Arthur Page.

All were hired at rates between $8 and $10 per day.

Over nearly 80 years, the owner-operator system grew to 32 contractors — all who operate like independent small businesses with their own vehicles, maintenance responsibilities, and substitute drivers under their hire.

The decision to award All-Star the new contract effectively ends Newtown’s owner-operator tradition on the last day of June 2012.

The All-Star contract does not include bus routes currently overseen by MTM Transportation Inc, which handles special needs and other transportation services in the district, or McCutchan Transportation, which oversees team-related transportation in the district.

The owners of MTM Transportation and McCutchan Transportation are also owner-operators in the district, however.

All-Star was the lowest qualified bidder for the 2012–17 contract, at just over $10.2 million. The collective owner-operators tendered the fourth lowest bid at $11.7 million, with First Student Transportation bidding just over $11 million and DATTCO presenting an $11.4 million bid.

Mr Nanavaty made the motion to accept All-Star for the contract, and Mr Buzzi seconded the motion.

Mr Nanavaty said while he has respect for public speakers who have come before the board in support maintaining the owner-operators in the district, he also thinks there is a different majority of people in town who have come to him personally voicing support for choosing the financially responsible option.

In speaking to his support of the motion, Mr Buzzi said he has spent at least a little part of every day thinking about the transportation contract and the decision before the school board.

“It was my hope and desire that the owner-operators would choose to cooperate with the board and submit a bid that allows us to meet our fiscal and fiduciary responsibilities to the district,” said Mr Buzzi. “This decision has placed me in an impossibly difficult situation and will affect me long after this meeting is over. I want to express how deeply disappointed I am in not being able to consider a bid from the owner-operators.”

While some have claimed the format of the request for bids was written in a way that would prohibit the owner-operators from being awarded the contract, Mr Buzzi said that was not the case. The different obligations in the bid, Mr Buzzi said, was a “roadmap” to how the school board and the owner-operators could continue a relationship.

“If MTM could do this, our owner-operators could have done this,” Mr Buzzi said.

Mr Buzzi said the owner-operators’ bid failed to provide the required performance bond, the group requested a waiver for the bid bond, and the bid document was unsigned.

Mr Hart agreed with Mr Buzzi that the owner-operators did have a chance to appropriately respond to the bid, “and they did not take that opportunity.”

“The current bid specifications,” Mr Hart said, “were designed to create an appropriate legal basis for our transportation system and offload much of the administrative work to a provider who has specialized expertise to perform these functions.”

Concerned About Complaint

Ms Leidlein, the sole vote against the motion, said she was uncomfortable with voting on the issue while a complaint submitted by the owner-operators to the State Board of Labor Relations was still in question.

As previously reported in The Bee, the owner-operators complaint with the State Board of Labor Relations alleges the district violated the Municipal Employees Labor Relations Act (MELRA). The complaint, issued by attorney Henry F. Murray, alleges a violation of Section 7-470(4) of MELRA in that the board has failed to bargain with the owner-operators through their elected contract committee with respect to its decision to subcontract school bus driving responsibilities.

That labor complaint hinges on three points: whether the owner-operators are employees and not contracted individuals; whether a committee representing the local drivers that has met with the Board of Education over the years to negotiate contracts is a labor union; and whether it was unfair for the board to seek outside services before bargaining with the owner-operators.

Mr Hart also addressed concerns and questions he has heard during the meeting. After checking with multiple authorities, Mr Hart said there is nothing in state law, policies, or past procedures that say a bidder should be disqualified early in the bidding process.

“In fact there is no requirement to ever disqualify. We just have to pick the lowest qualified bidder,” said Mr Hart.

Factors other than price can also be considered, Mr Hart said, but if a bidder had been thrown out from the start, the school board would not have the opportunity to study those other factors.

Consultation with multiple firms, Mr Hart said, also proved there is no legal basis for rejecting all of the bids.

“[All-Star has] a business model based on operating locally,” said Mr Hart, “hiring local drivers — as we heard, they had 90-plus percent of their drivers hired locally— station their buses locally. So the arguments about diverting funds out of this town just don’t hold water.”

Following the meeting, Mr Hart explained contract negotiations will now begin between the school district and All-Star. Mr Hart anticipates his board will have the final contract before it for approval in about one month.

Some of the specifications in the contract include having All-Star house buses in Newtown, if possible, and providing staff to handle questions from parents and community members when they arise, according to Mr Hart.

“I think this is an economic development opportunity for Newtown,” said Mr Hart.

With the transportation contract awarded to a bus company, Mr Hart also said he expects Newtown’s transportation department to be reorganized.

Mr Hart said he hopes his board can now turn its attention to core education issues like deciding whether the school board should vote to eliminate some of the days from the scheduled February break in this year’s school calendar in response to losing the first four days of school due to Tropical Storm Irene.

(See related article about the school district’s discussion on the school calendar.)

Public Participation

During the public participation at the start of the meeting, resident Dan Shea was first to speak. As a resident for more than 40 years and a retired teacher, Mr Shea said he had two children grow up in the district, and noted the school’s boards failure to look into other areas of the budget that have become bloated.

“Please consider another way to cut costs before you eviscerate a part of our Newtown tradition, a part of our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren,” said Mr Shea.

Former first selectman Joe Borst also spoke in favor of keeping the owner-operator system.

After calculating the difference between the All-Star Transportation bid and the owner-operators bid, Mr Borst said the discrepancy for awarding the 2012–17 contract to the owner-operators would represent a 16-cent increase for Newtown’s taxpayers.

“I think it is something we want to keep,” said Mr Borst. “The taxpayers have said they want to keep it, and they have said they don’t mind paying the extra money to keep it.”

Owner-operator and Sandy Hook resident Beth Koschel noted that while First Student and DATTCO are much larger companies than All-Star, their bids were much closer to the owner-operators’ bid on the contract.

“The owner-operators did put in a competitive bid,” said Ms Koschel. “Some may say that All-Star offers a savings of $1.5 million over five years. I argue the point that this is only true if they do end up operating at the cost for the full five years. The owner-operators have never asked for an increase more than what the contract called for, and you cannot possibly be certain of this with a company that Newtown has not dealt with.”

As someone who has been buying, operating, and maintaining a bus for the past 14 years, Ms Koschel said she does not see how the competitors’ bids are sustainable.

Resident Robin Fitzgerald said she is concerned about deep cuts in education spending, and asked the school board to keep every dollar possible in the classroom.

Former first selectman and school board chairman Herb Rosenthal also spoke during the meeting. He said he knows from personal experience making the right decision while in public service is difficult, but awarding the transportation contract to the owner-operators, he said, would be both the popular decision and the right thing to do.