Disgusted And Amazed

To the Editor:

As a former resident and retired employee of the Town of Newtown with grandchildren in the schools, I was disgusted and amazed that this town would ever replace owner-operators with an outside bus company. When I heard that JR [Janet Robinson] wanted All-Star to replace O-O, I knew it was a no winner for Newtown. The BOE got their orders from JR and followed them.

But something happened. The bids came in and All-Star was the highest bidder. Not to worry BOE, just give the bids back to RB [Ron Bienkowski] so he could change the figures and resubmit them. You could have knocked me over with a feather; All-Star was now the lowest bidder. Then without any questions, the BOE did what they were told and awarded All-Star the contract. Newtown must be the only place where it is legal to change the numbers on a bid when it didn’t come out the way a group of people wanted.

I thought things like this only happened in New York, Newark, or Chicago. How did this ever happen in Newtown? Was the fix in? I guess we should be lucky that a few MTM buses were not blown up so MTM would get the message.

I didn’t think much about this over the summer until I checked the list of bus routes in The Bee to see what time my granddaughter would be picked up and noticed page after page after page of the routes were all being driven by All-Star buses.

MTM has been picking my granddaughter for years. When the bus finally arrived just short of lunchtime I asked the driver where the MTM bus was. The reply was, “MTM is not running bus routes any longer.” When I asked why, the reply was, “All-Star has taken over all the routes in Newtown.”

A few days later I found out what happened to the MTM buses. As I passed by Amaral’s graveyard, I noticed a large number of MTM buses parked in there with no routes to run and weeds growing over the tires.

How in the world did this ever happen?

How did All-Star who bid on O-O routes only start the year with 42 buses on the road? Who authorized All-Star to take MTM bus routes and replace them with All-Star? Where was the BOE during all this? Are they totally incompetent or just turn their backs?

Ray Thompson

Old Waterbury Road, Southbury                              October 15, 2012