Durham rep asked to negotiate but district CFO says it wouldn’t be ethical
KCJJ Staff
02/12/19
The Iowa City Community School District will have a new company handling its transportation services next school year.
The school board voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a contract with North American Central School Bus, which had submitted the lowest of two bids. NACSB’s bid was roughly $355,000 lower than Durham School Services, the district’s current busing provider.
District chief financial officer Craig Hansel, who made the recommendation, told the board NACSB won both in cost and in a RFP bid scoring metric taking into account five different factors.
“It’s not one that I take lightly and it’s not one that I necessarily wanted to do,” Hansel said of his recommendation. “I value our partnership with Durham. But we put it out for a transparent bid and ethically and responsibly this company came back as the low bidder.”
Durham regional manager Alicia Hodges asked the board during community comment to negotiate, saying they had provided an alternate bid closer to NACSB’s price. She argued because NACSB’s bid included a driver pay rate of $19 an hour – a decrease from the current rate and below the expected rate to be sought by the drivers’ union – it skewed the bids.
“We believe North American proposing to take driver wages backward is not responsible and not feasible,” Hodges said. “If North American were to use the same average wage that we had proposed in our bid proposal of $20.55 per hour, the delta becomes insignificant.”
Hodges estimated it would leave their bid $188,000 higher than NACSB’s bid. And Hansel said while the NACSB driver wage is low, it will be up to them to pay the difference if the local teamsters union seeks a higher wage.
“That’s the bus company’s problem,” Hansel said. “And that’s one of the reasons you contract out and you don’t hire your own drivers, to offload that headache, so to speak, of trying to keep people in those chairs.
“And, so, that will be the bus company’s complete responsibility to have enough drivers that are qualified on-hand for everything we want to do.”
He says NACSB officials have already been in contact with the teamsters to discuss the pay rate.
Durham has been the district’s transportation service provider for the last 12 years. Even with the change in providers, NACSB’s bid still came in nearly $260,000 higher than the district’s $4.6 million transportation budget for this school year.
Hansel adds he’s spoken with officials from both companies and has been assured of a smooth transition taking place.
