The controversy continues surrounding the New
Hanover County School systems Athletic Field Maintenance Contract. An email
from school staff notes that before
the contract was signed, there was already a plan in place to potentially
increase the contract cost to the school system at a later date. School board
members were not aware of this potential future expense when they agreed to the
contract.
The school systems specification required a costly reel type mower
which the company that was awarded the contract did not own. According to an
email, school staff came up with a plan that would have allowed the contractor
to come back after the fact and raise their price to the school system to help
cover the cost of the reel mower.
New Hanover County School General Counsel Bullard wrote in an
email on August 27th “the
plan is to see if the rotary mowers Trugreen uses are sufficient and if not, we
can ask them to quote a price upgrade to a reel mower and we can evaluate the
price increase at that time.” Logistically, since there were only 3 business
days between the date of General Counsel’s email and the day the contract was
first signed, any price increase would have happened after the contract was
signed.
In a specially called meeting on January 20th, staff were
specifically asked about the plan to increase the cost. In a recording of that
meeting, staff can be heard struggling to explain the plan discussed in Bullard's
email.
Board of Education members should have been made aware of the plan
and the associated additional cost so they could better evaluate the overall
cost to the school system. The consideration of additional cost could have
affected how and to who the contract was ultimately awarded.
It should be noted that the company that lost the bid included the
cost for the reel mower in their quote to the school system.
