Buffalo Schools contract with Xerox, no competive bidding allowed

Art Post (Guest)

Buffalo Schools contract
with Xerox
System contracted without competitive
bidding
Updated: Monday, 20 Apr 2009, 6:47 PM EDT
Published : Monday, 20 Apr 2009, 6:47 PM EDT

Rich Newberg
Posted by: Emily Lenihan
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Can the Buffalo School District award a multi-million dollar contract without shopping around?

The leasing contract for close to 300 copy machines for the Buffalo School System could be awarded Wednesday to the Xerox Corporation, without any competitive bidding.

"We can compete with Xerox head on, head on," said John Bird of OCE Corporate Printing Division.

That doesn't copy well with the OCE company, which wanted to bid on the contract, but was told by the School District there would be not bidding.

"They're not allowing vendors to come in and compete against the current vendor. It's kind of a closed door policy," said Bird.

OCE, a company based in the Netherlands, says it can offer everything Xerox has offered with a 30 to 40% savings on energy.

School District CFO Gary Crosby told me he was going to go to bid, but decided to stay with XEROX because it had significantly dropped its costs from three years ago.

Crosby said, "We did some diligence to make sure that the price that we did negotiate, which is below the contract price, state contract price, is one that we feel iscompetitive in today's market place."

"We would just like to show them the opportunity to see a competitor that actually can do all the Xerox can do, and possibly more," said Bird.

Buffalo School Board member Ralph Hernandez told me the School District can legally re-issue to contract to XEROX based on state guidelines, but that there's also an issue of fairness involved.

"If a vendor comes out, like this particular vendor has come out, and makes reference to the fact that they have been treated unfairly, then I have an obligation and so do the other board members to look into it, and that's exactly what we'll do," said Hernandez.

The District Administration says Xerox came in with a price 31% below the New York State Contract Price, which meets the competitive bidding requirements.

The no-bid contract will be brought up for discussion at Wednesday's Board meeting.

Note from Art: I wonder how much of the Boards pension funds are invested in Xerox, a little digging may turn something up!

see video in the reply here

4/20/0910:40 PM

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Art Post (Guest)

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4/20/0910:41 PM

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merlinDocusultant P4P'er

The school district does not have to bid these machines if they on under the NYS contract. The NYS contract is purchased only. What the district has to do is bid the finance part on the deal. Most districts do not.

4/21/098:22 AM

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fisherMaven VIP

I have seen so much shady dealing with school districts and vendors using the "State Contract" the past 6 months that its not even funny.

I had never really understood how any honest vendor could do the state contract and make money. Every time we bid on a school district we got blown out of the water. This past year two competitors who were big in the local school districts went under. This left a number of school districts scrambling for a copier vendor.

In going in and meeting with these schools I learned exactly how its done. Its done by using a mix on new and used equipment (mostly used). These school district people are complete idiots as far as business sence goes....that or they are on the take. The one school district I met with didn't even care that they had been given a bunch of used crap. All they cared about was that the vendor that they wanted to get the deal came in on the number of machines and the speed bands they wanted at a price that was below the state contract. At that point their asses were covered and they could go with their vendor friend. They had 4 105ppm Canons that each had between one and three million copies on them when they were delivered. They had 7 50 ppm Canons that had 750K to one million on them at the time of delivery. It was all well and good until the vendor went belly up last fall and they couldn't get the service or supplies that was built into their $3,600 a month lease payment 17 months into a 63-month contract. Do the math on that one!!!! Also do the math on what you could buy the above mentioned high meter Canons from a broker for. The vendor got funded over $180,000 took the money and ran. The funny thing with this one is that in the board minutes available on line from when the district accepted this deal the business administrator presented this vendor's proposal as saving the district thousands and thousands of dollars.

Another school district with the same vendor went out to "Bid" and the vendor simply re-leased the current ANALOG equipment back to the school district on a new 60-month lease beating the state contract pricing and the school district went with them while every other vendor bidding was proposing new equipment.

None of this would have ever come to light if the vendor hadn't gone under.

Bottom line with these state contracts is that they are ripe for corruption.

4/21/099:49 AM

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