Youngstown school board panel OKs bidding process

A state fiscal oversight commission has indicated it doesn’t like the package.

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — The community members of the city school board’s Financial Advisory Committee say they see nothing wrong with the bidding process used by the school board in seeking transportation support services.

The committee was created to provide an independent look at district finances.

“We don’t see a downside,” Chairman Greg Slemons told the school board members on his committee Wednesday.

That would appear to put both the Financial Advisory Committee and the school board at odds with the state fiscal-oversight commission that has been controlling district finances since the state placed Youngstown under fiscal emergency in November 2006.

Some members of the commission have been openly critical of the bid document the district used to secure proposals for the proposed contract. Roger Nehls, commission chairman, has called the process and the document flawed.

The commission had advised the school board against using the document, saying it lacked specifics and wouldn’t generate bidding competition, but the board used it anyway.

Only one company, Community Bus Services Inc. of Youngstown, submitted a proposal meeting the board’s request for digital video recorders/global positioning system units for 60 buses, computer software for bus routing and maintenance as well as transportation employee payroll and general consulting services.

The company offered all of that at no cost while guaranteeing a $500,000 reduction in the $5 million in annual student transportation costs Youngstown now pays.

In exchange, CBS proposes that the school board extend the special- needs student transportation contract CBS has with the district for an additional five years.

CBS is in the second year of that three-year pact and is being paid just over $1.6 million with annual 3.8 percent increases built into the agreement.

That extension also raised some concerns on the oversight commission, with member Paul Marshall saying it looked like the special-needs contract would be subsidizing the services contract.

Slemons, a CPA, said the community members of his committee spoke with Nehls on Wednesday about his concerns.

It seems that he has one version of what the bidding document should be, and the school district has another, Slemons said, adding that it’s OK to disagree. In the end, the district got a proposal for the services it was seeking, he said.

The contract extension for CBS might be seen as an issue, but that contract was put out for competitive bids two years ago, and the rates secured from CBS seem fair, said Scott Roush, also a CPA and another community member of the Financial Advisory Committee.

Slemons pointed out that the CBS proposal is just that — a proposal — and contract details have yet to be finalized.

Some companies declined to issue a proposal, saying they were given only two weeks to respond to the bid document while CBS had been working with the school board’s Business Committee on a proposal for months.

Slemons discounted that complaint, saying two weeks should be sufficient time for a company to put a package together if it wanted the job.

Richard Atkinson, a member of the school board and one of three board members on the Financial Advisory Committee, disagreed. That wasn’t enough time, he said.

The district plans to move ahead in finalizing a contract with CBS and then take it to the school board for approval.

From there, it must go before the state oversight commission which has the power to throw it out.

gwin@vindy.com