001Uh, Mrs. Chzik >> present. >> Miss Fox. I see Miss Fox >> just can't hear you. >> Present. >> Mr. McCandrew, >> present. >> Miss Merkel, >> present. >> Miss Trisleey, >> present. >> Mr. Triano, >> present. >> Mr. Holmes, >> present. >> Eight, present. And we're just waiting for Mr. Casey for the record. >> He's here. The purpose of this meeting, this special meeting has been called for the specific purpose to take board action regarding the construction management request for proposal and to consider a motion to suspend the district RFP policy and has been duly advertised. Before we begin, I will turn this meeting over to the superintendent. >> Um, folks, I just I just wanted to take a moment and ask if we could have a moment of silence. Um, we lost a
002longtime Westsider uh who was the secretary at West Grant High School for a very long time, Mrs. Joanne Fallon. Um, she began her career in the district office with special education and then she was uh presence in the West Scranton High School main office for a very very long time and she raised many of our principles including Mr. Geneala and Mr. Duca who are on this call right now. Um, in addition to her 10 children, 10 personal children. Um, uh, Rob Duca wanted me to tell you that not only being a fixture in the main office, but she was a wife of a veteran and she was a very proud mom of several veterans and she always went out of her way for her students who decided to join the military. Um, and she really
003was a fixture for um, the West Grant community and West Grant High School. So, if we could just take a moment of silence in the memory of Mrs. Joanne Fallon, please. Thank you very much. >> Can you hear me? >> Jenny, do we have anybody's for public comments? >> I I have two people that signed up, but I do not see that they signed in. So, but I will still ask for Hamilton Patel or Asa McNeely. And I don't see any of them that are in the attendees section. So we can move on. Okay. Director Merkel. I move to suspend the district's RFP policy. On the question, >> I guess on the question, do you want to um >> Sure. On the question, >> Attorney Moran, do you want to explain why we're suspending the
004policy? >> Um, yes. During the pendency of this RFP, some questions were raised. Um, some circumstances changed. Uh we had uh literally a new board member join the board uh during the pendency of this. Um there was a robust discussion at an operations committee meeting two weeks ago I guess three weeks ago and then more of a discussion at a work session and then some direction was given to administration that essentially instead of awarding a contract incident to the RFP that administration tries to negotiate and get the best terms that we can with a preferred vendor that the board has identified by consensus. uh this action that we are taking tonight, both of these questions, both of these actions is going to put the administration in the best position to carry out the will of
005that board being that uh it would be uh potentially unlawful to award a contract or or to negotiate a contract while there is an RFP uh still pending. Uh so it's therefore my recommendation that before administration endeavors to negotiate that we take action to end this RFP process like we've done with other uh RFPs since I've been there in my short tenure. Uh it is certainly within the board's perview, its prerogative and it was specifically written into the bispex that um specific proposals uh or proposers are unnoticed that the board could reject all of them. So my recommendation is that that's what the board does tonight. Take action to end the RFP uh by rejecting the proposals that have been submitted. That's one. The second hangup uh based on my research and responsing responding to
006questions that have come up about why we do it this way, why does the district have to RFP for professional services in particular? Because that's not what the law requires. Well, it turns out that you you you have a policy on your books uh that um is very lengthy and very involved. And as a matter of fact, we we we ran into this and it became an impediment to the award of an architect contract uh last time this came up because uh in that instance, we found out that buried in your policy was a restriction on accepting electronic proposals. uh there was some wisdom in having uh a policy to seek competitive bids for all services and all goods when the district was in financial recovery. You are not in financial recovery. Uh that designation
007has been removed. Therefore, uh the RFP policy does not really have any lawful application to the district. In this instance, you do not need uh to uh competitively u request proposals for professional service. But if we are taking action to end the RFPs and then administration really wants to be without any restriction, without any uh impediment or give anybody the opportunity to come back at us, it is also wise to remove this policy because to not do that would ultimately force us to then have to follow it and uh we'd be right back in the situation that we are in. So, the recommendation of me as your solicitor and I believe administration to put us in the best position to carry out the will of the board and negotiate a construction management uh contract with
008the preferred vendor is to take both of these actions to end the RFP and to suspend the policy that is currently on the books. >> Thanks. >> Anyone else? >> Okay. On the question. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. >> Can you hear me? >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, thank you. Okay. Uh, thank you, Solicitor Moran, for um that intro. Um, it will I do have a couple, I guess, clarifying questions then off of that. Um, and trying to do my research. I did ask previously why we started doing RFPs for professional services. Um, and some information that I came across was, um, this board's policy requiring RFPs wasn't created out of convenience. It was a reform born out of necessity. The Pennsylvania Auditor General's 2017 performance audit found serious contract and oversight problems in
009the district, and the state's 2018 financial recovery plan did specifically require that the district will not enter into contracts for goods and services without a bid, RFP, or RFQ. In direct response to this, um, the board revised policy 610 in May of 2018, second read in June of 2018 to strengthen those bidding and RFP requirements. In July of 2018, the auditor general noted how the Scarington School Board made strides by adding more strict bidding requirements to the exact policy we are voting to suspend this evening. Um, denying all bids and suspending that policy now bypasses safeguards that were put in place after past audit findings and recovery plan recommendations. Um I do have some clarifying questions I guess on um we do still have a financial recovery officer because we are still in the monitoring
010phase of recovery um which means that we're monitored by the state to make sure that we're still abiding by certain parts of the recovery plan. So um I do have a few requests this evening um just so I can understand this a little more clear. one would be to our financial recovery officer to give her opinion on us suspending a policy that was revised directly from the recovery plan. Um and then two if it's administration's recommendation to take these steps this evening which completely reversed the work that was done after the auditor general's findings which some of you were here for. Thank you. except one. >> I just want to point out that the auditor general requ had us bid out the bus contract which ended up costing the district almost an extra million dollars
011because our previous vendor was actually willing to um to to keep it at uh roughly where it was at. So, the auditor general's report had a lot of great recommendations, but one of them cost us a million dollars. Dr. SA, are you on? >> I am. Uh, and uh, Katherine, I'm sorry I can't answer your question. I don't know if that was carried over into the amended recovery plan or not. And unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to look it up. I don't have access. Well, I do have access, but I don't have the original plan. I have the amended plan. Thank you, Dr. Sailor. >> It's Attorney Moran. I want to just point out in response to this question that the recommendate the recommended action is to suspend the policy, not necessarily to res
012to resend it or revoke it. It's to it's to suspend it in this instance so the administration can carry out the will of the board and negotiate at arms length with a construction management vendor. So that just that just means we are still keeping it. >> We're keeping it still active now. >> It's up to the board. The board the board has the power to revoke, resend, or suspend. >> For tonight's meeting, we are just requesting to suspend it temporarily. If that's a direction we're going to go in the future, then that will be another meeting. for tonight. We are looking to temporarily suspend it so that they can move forward with the direction and action that needs to be taken. >> And that and just to clarify that was working with solicitor Moran that
013the board had given us direction and we want to ensure that we're following that direction but we're doing so correctly which is why it was a suspension. >> Absolutely. >> We we also have a parallel AR 610 AR0 also with that. So that would go to or suspend it to an administrative regulation 610 AR0 purchases subject to bid in quotation. So will that be also suspended because it's a parallel AR to go with the policy? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> If it's a tandem component of the policy bet, if that's the way you're explaining it, then yes. >> Yes. Okay. >> Okay. Roll call. >> Uh, Mr. Borthwick, >> yes. >> Mr. Casey, >> yes. >> Mrs. Chzik, >> yes. >> Miss Fox, >> no. >> Mr. McCandrew, >> yes. >> Miss Merkel, >> yes.
014>> Mr. Zleki, >> yes. >> Mr. Triano, >> yes. >> Mr. Holmes, >> yes. >> Eight affirmative, one negative. Motion passes. You just need a motion to adjurnn, I think. >> No. Don't we have the uh second >> the second motion? >> We have the second motion. Director Director Merkel, could you please read the second motion? >> The second one is from the operations committee. I believe it's for um >> That's Mr. McCander. >> Director McAndrew. >> Director Mccandrew, please read that. >> Yeah, let me pull it up. I don't have it in front of me. Jenny, can you email me real quick? >> It's It's the motion to reject the proposals received for the construction management. >> All right. Make a motion to reject the proposals received for the construction management. >> Second. >>
015On the question. >> Sure. On the question, I would just like to clarify um as solicitor Moran stated before that we put an RFP out for this process. We had seven firms submit. we are now denying all bids and suspending the policy to negotiate with one firm. Um, this board worked really hard um to make sure that everything um was very clear and transparent and I'm just uh I personally believe that we're straggling away from um every all the things that we put in place. We're saying that they're red tape that are holding us up, but all this was put in place for a reason. As we can look at the auditor journals report, the recovery plan, uh there's a timeline here that led us to where we are at. And now, um, I am
016nervous that we're just cutting everything that was put into place so that there was full transparency, responsibility of public dollars. Um, I just I don't know why we're um we're we're doing this at this time. Thank you. >> I want to be clear and state that we are being responsible with public dollars by allowing our administration to negotiate directly. Whereas each of these respondents to the RFP had a static uh uh bid, we are now going to negotiate a better deal. So that is absolutely fiscally responsible. And also cutting through red tape as as you mentioned is a good thing. So I'm happy that we're doing something like this. >> We're only negotiating because I asked that during the work session. >> Congrats. >> Anyone else? I I think going forward when professional services come
017about we have to either work on a new path forward and not doing RFPs or have a like an understanding with the board the way we want to do these hand handle these going forward you know you know I I I think every RFP that I participate on the board has never went smoothly so I don't think it's especially for professional services it's the way to go um but I think that's for a conversation after this that we could sit down with the administration and the legal team to uh work on how to handle these better. >> Roll call. >> Mr. Casey. >> Yes. >> Uh, Mrs. Chzik, >> yes. >> Miss Fox, >> Mr. McCandrew, >> yes. >> Miss Merkel, >> yes. >> Mr. Leki, >> yes. >> Mr. Triano, >> yes. >> Mr.
018Borthwick, >> yes. >> Mr. Holmes. >> Yes. >> Eight affirmative, one negative. Motion passes. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> I'll make the motion. >> Second. >> All in favor? I >> I >> meeting. Good night. >> Night. >> Nice and quick.