Bidding for $35M E-SPLOST project ‘compromised’

Plans for a new $35 million complex for Northeast High School and Appling Middle School, once set to be completed by July 2017, will take longer than expected.

Though bids for the project were sent out this year, Bibb County Board of Education member Tom Hudson said, “the process itself was compromised by leaking information to someone who is totally inappropriate and unprofessional. … I think there should be consequences.”

The bidding process for the project, paid for using money from the education special project local option sales tax, will “start from scratch,” Hudson said. Bidding will start after the board adopts a new policy to “provide clarity to the selection process and the need to maintain confidentiality at every level throughout the process,” for both bidders and district employees, according to Thursday night’s meeting agenda.

Board Chairman Lester Miller said Superintendent Curtis Jones’ recommendation about who should win the contract for the project was “a rumor out on the street” before it even got to the board for a vote.

“I don’t think anybody’s done anything wrong, it’s just the way we’ve always done things,” Miller said. “Once you have a determination that certain people are no longer in the bid process, you inform them so they don’t hold out everything as you start moving toward the other ones. That’s something we’ve never had a problem with in the past, but this time, people talk.”

A second reading of a new policy on how to handle a bidding process was read at the meeting. Specific details, other than the new classification of women-owned businesses as minority contractors, will be brought to the board before the new policy is adopted.

Board member Ella Carter, who’d been charged with forming a renaming committee for the schools, delivered two recommendations to the board: Appling Middle School Academy of Health Sciences and Northeast High School Academy of Health Sciences.

In other business, Chief Financial Officer Ron Collier said the E-SPLOST collection during the first eight months totals $19 million, about 2.4 percent less than projected.

The following items were also approved by the board Thursday night:

▪  The purchase of five Blue Bird school buses from Yancey Bus Sales and Service through the state contract for no more than $498,427 using capital projects SPLOST dollars.

▪  The purchase of 2,580 laptops, and five spares, from Dell through the state contract for $1,498,257.32 in E-SPLOST dollars.

This story was originally published October 20, 2016 at 8:22 PM with the headline "Bidding for $35M E-SPLOST project ‘compromised’."