W. Mifflin pays $10K a month for equipment no one uses
Saturday, February 18, 2012
By Mary Niederberger, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Under the terms of a five-year contract the West Mifflin Area School District holds with Ford Business Machines, it pays nearly $10,000 a month to lease equipment for scanning documents even though the district has no employee who knows how to operate the equipment.
That information was brought to light by school director Phil Shar at the Feb. 9 workshop session and again at Thursday's regular school board meeting. Mr. Shar questioned the contract's origins and the amount of scanning that was being done at the Feb. 9 meeting.
He resumed the conversation at Thursday's session providing details of the contract, which calls for the district to pay $9,822 monthly on a five-year contract that started in April 2009 and runs through March 2014. The total contract cost is $535,190.
Mr. Shar said his research found the contract was awarded by the board in March 2009 after a representative of Ford was permitted to meet with the school board and former superintendent Patrick Risha in an executive session before their regular monthly meeting.
Business manager Dennis Cmar confirmed that the firm was brought into executive session to discuss the contract in March 2009.
Mr. Shar questioned whether it was legal for Ford's presentation to be done in executive session.
"I couldn't believe it was permitted to be done in the back room and not brought to the floor," Mr. Shar said.
District solicitor Gary Matta said he did not attend the meeting and did not know specifically what transpired. But he said the session was legal if the representative from Ford discussed "items of a nature only about his business" and the vote was brought to the public floor. Minutes from the March 2009 meeting posted on the district website indicate the board approved the contract with an 8-0 vote, with one member absent.
Mr. Shar said that while Mr. Matta was not present at the meeting, his firm, Dodara, Matta & Cambest, were the district's solicitors at the time the contract was awarded.
Mr. Cmar said the board was able to award the contract without going out to bid because Ford Business Machines is included on the state's bid list. That list includes firms who have already met price limits approved by the state and public bodies are permitted to enter into contracts with them without going through the bidding process.
Mr. Cmar said the sole employee who was familiar with the scanning equipment left the district months ago and that the district now needs to train other employees in order to finish the scanning project. He said roughly half of the 1.5 million documents the district planned to scan have been scanned.
Thursday is not the first time Mr. Shar has questioned a contract with Ford Business Machines. In January 2011, Mr. Shar and school directors Ted Cale and Nick Alexandroff opposed the board majority's vote to award a new five-year, $12,972-a-month copy machine contract to Ford when the firm still had a year remaining on the current contract. The three opposing school directors wanted the district to seek competing proposals for the copy machine contract.
Later in Thursday's meeting, Mr. Shar made a motion for the board to hire attorney George Gobel to replace Mr. Matta's firm as the district's solicitor. That vote failed in a 4-4 tie, with board president Ted Cale absent.
School director Ron Rubinsak then made a motion for the board to hire the firm of Andrews & Price as district solicitors. That motion failed by the same 4-4 vote, with Mr. Rubinsak, Mr. Shar, Mr. Alexandroff and Michael Price voting in favor and Richard Crux, Harry Fast, Daniel McDonald and Judy Andzelik opposed.
Mary Niederberger: mniederberger@post-gazette.com; 412-851-1512.
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