More details on the Aramark Issue

Aramark, a national company that provides an array of services to schools, institutions, and a variety of other organizations, manages custodial services and facilities for the Oyster River School District. The contract between Aramark and ORCSD has been in place for many years, is renewed each year and has never been competitively bid.

At the April 2, 2008 school board meeting, the district Business Manager presented a proposal to the school board that Aramark be contracted to provide ‘energy savings’ in the school district. At this meeting, Aramark officials presented an overview of their energy savings services. The proposal would cost the district $316,866 over 5 years, clearly well over the $5,000 threshold for competitive bidding.

As noted in the school board minutes of this meeting, the proposed energy savings contract was the outcome of “six months of review and discussion between ORCSD and Aramark”. No other vendors were included in these discussions. No RFP was created, no other vendors were even contacted, and no other proposals were presented to the board. Aramark was selected for this proposed contract based on a ‘good relationship’ between Aramark and the district business manager.

Energy savings services are available from a wide range of commercial vendors. UNH also provides such services at low or no cost. There was no excuse for the district to deal exclusively with one vendor, especially one who already has another no bid contract with the district.

Outraged that such a large contract was proposed to the board with no competitive bids, several citizens wrote letters to the board objecting both to this contract and the lack of any sort of a competitive bid process.

At the school board meeting on April 16, 2008, the proposal once again came up for a decision on whether the business manager should proceed to negotiate a final contract with Aramark. With the contract now in the public eye as a no bid contract, the board voted against further negotiations with Aramark and instead told the business manager to solicit two additional bids. This episode raises several issues:

--If there had been no public response, it is likely the board once again would have violated it’s own procurement policy.

--If additional bids demonstrate that like-kind services are available at a substantially lower cost, what does that tell us about all the other no-bid contracts currently in effect in the district?

--How much taxpayer money has been wasted on inflated, overpriced no-bid contracts?