Leonardtown, MD — For the second month in a row, St. Mary’s County Board of Education member Rita Weaver has questioned the school system’s bidding procedures. Weaver has been critical of the system piggybacking onto other school board’s contracts instead of bidding the contract out on their own.
At the Aug. 26 school board meeting, Weaver challenged contracts for bread products and uniform rental and cleaning services. In the end she was the sole dissenter on the bread contract. At a meeting in July Weaver questioned the contract for flooring services.
The bread products contract, which was awarded to Schmidt Baking Company of Baltimore, used a previously awarded contract by the Calvert County Public Schools. Weaver noted the fiscal problems being experienced by that county’s school system and questioned the using of their contract.
Weaver contends if the school system doesn’t advertise its own bid, it would never know if it could be saving money. She said if the bid was higher than the contract to be used from another county, then that contract could be used.
Director of Procurement Vicky Mayle informed Weaver that her department was too small to be able to put every single contract out on bid. “We don’t blindly decide to do it. We analyze it to decide if that is the best for us,” she said.
Weaver countered by saying that if Mayle’s department needed more staff in order to save the county money in procurement then those staff should be hired. “If you haven’t tried, how do you know,” Weaver said of putting out the bids locally. She asked Mayle to document if she needed more staff.
Weaver’s concerns fell on deaf ears to the other school board members, who voted 3-1 to support the Calvert County contract for bread. Board member Marilyn Crosby was not in attendance.
Then when the next item came up, a contract for uniform rental and cleaning services, Weaver renewed her concerns. That contract, to Cintas, piggybacked onto a contract issued by Harford County.
Weaver did however vote for that contract after being told that Cintas, even though they are a national firm, has a local office in Hughesville. Also the board was told that Cintas agreed to extend all of the current terms and conditions of their current contract with the county.
Also during the discussion of the bread contract, Director of Food and Nutrition Services Mike Jones was asked why the cost of bread had increased from $59,105.56 in FY ’11 to more than $100,000 this year. He said it was almost exclusively because of the added cost several years ago of converting to whole grain as mandated by the federal government.
Contact Dick Myers at dick.myers@thebaynet.com