Idaho school district pulls back copier contract

Idaho school district pulls back copier contract


BOISE, Idaho – The largest school district in the state has recanted on a decision last month to award a contract paying Xerox Corp. more than $43,700 a month for copier services.

The board that governs the Meridian School District voted Tuesday night to restart the bidding process after an Idaho copier company complained, saying its contract would have saved taxpayers $680,000 over five years.

"It's a victory of sorts," said Gary Mahn, chairman of Fisher's Document Systems Inc. "They're not going ahead with the award to Xerox, which we felt was not justified."

Earlier this year, Mahn's Boise-based company bid about $32,417 per month to provide more than 120 copiers to the school district in southwest Idaho for 60 months.

The school board instead picked Connecticut-based Xerox, which submitted a proposal requesting $43,758 a month to provide the district the same number of copiers for the next five years.

Fisher's Document Systems filed a notice of objection with the district last month, saying the board that governs Meridian schools should have been more fiscally responsible with public money.

The move forced the board to reconvene and decide if they wanted to respond to the objection or stick with their decision.

"When you get a deal where you can save $680,000, you jump on it," Mahn told the board during the Tuesday meeting.

District officials said last month they went with Xerox because the company offered to provide one full-time employee and one part-time employee based locally to oversee maintenance of the copying machines.

Fisher's says its proposal offered to provide service within four hours.

School board chairman Mike Vuittonet said Tuesday the district will take a step back from its July decision to award the copier contract to Xerox and again, consider other copier companies.

"We do have concerns. Our patrons have concerns. We have stepped back," Vuittonet said.

The district will now send out another request for proposals to provide copier services for its administrative offices and about 50 public schools expected to serve an estimated 34,000 students this fall.

District spokesman Eric Exline said he expects new proposals as early as September.

Fisher's Document Systems and Xerox were two of four copier companies that bid on the contract earlier this year. The other companies were Konica Minolta and IKON Office Solutions.

Xerox has provided copier services for Meridian schools since 2004.

It's funny, when I read this initally, it looked to me like the board had simply misunderstood Fisher's plan.

They seemed to be comparing Xerox's statement that there would be 1.5 employees based locally to provide service vs. Fisher's "replacement guarantee" that if they could not fix a machine, they would replace it within 24 hours.

Instead, they should have compared the "response time" portion of the bids. I still haven't heard what Xerox's is, though I imagine it'll be 4 hours exactly like Fisher's.

It appeared to me that the board approved a plan to pay an extra $11,000 because the Xerox plan included a full-time person and a part-time person. Seems to me they could have hired the people themselves for $11,000 a month!

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Originally posted by Old Glory:
It appeared to me that the board approved a plan to pay an extra $11,000 because the Xerox plan included a full-time person and a part-time person. Seems to me they could have hired the people themselves for $11,000 a month!

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