School Board votes down purchase of buses, puts out call for new bids

Last Wednesday night one of the topics on the agenda was the approval of the purchase of several school buses from three private contractors in Malta. With the school set to start in just over a month, the board was asked to approve the purchase of the bus by the Malta School District.

At the April 30 school board meeting, the board agreed that the school district would but the buses and run the routes that bring students from outside of Malta into the town’s schools. Since that time, one new member was elected to the Malta School Board and he said at Wednesday night’s meeting that he wasn’t sure that the bus purchases were a good idea.

“I have severe hesitations in doing any of this,” said School Board Trustee R.J. Tollefson. “I’ve weighed the positive and the negative and I have a whole list of things that are wrong with this.”

Tollefson said that he felt there was a problem with how people have been shown the information regarding the purchase of the buses, adding he feels there is zero savings in the school running their own bus routes as opposed to having private contractors do the work.

“In fact, this could be more expensive,” he said, “in a significant amount.”

He said he agreed that shortening some of the bus routes out of town would provide a true savings but added that buying the buses outright provides no savings to the school district, in his opinion.

“I see zero benefit in doing this,” he said.

At a public meeting prior to Wednesday night’s school board meeting, Tollefson, fellow board member Carter Clausen and Malta School’s Superintendent Kris Kuehn met with the three contractors who work the bus routes. He said that each of them, when asked, said that none of their buses had more than five good years left of operation.

“So before seven years are up we are buying more buses,” he said. “I just see this revolving door of buying buses over and over and over versus just keeping it with (contractors) and making smarter route decisions and having a true savings.”

Board member Galen Curtis asked Tollefson what he thought the solution to the problem is.

Tollefson said the routes should be re-bid.

“I feel confident that our local people will provide an honest bid,” he said. “And we maintain what we already have.”

Tollefson said that he talked with multiple business people and not one of them thought that buying the buses made economic sense. He said that he agreed with 90-percent of the proposal that the school board approved at the April meeting, but added that the initial cost of purchasing a fleet of buses would set the district back financially and would reoccur each time new buses needed to be purchased.

At the conclusion of the Tollefson airing his concern, the board was asked to approve the purchase of the buses. On the table were three motions to be voted upon in which a total of a little over $100,000 were to be spent on the bus fleet.

In the first vote, Clausen and Mark Knudsen voted in favor while Curtis and Tollefson voted against with board trustee Craig Skiff abstaining due to family relations with the seller. In order for the motion to carry it needed a majority and as the vote was deadlocked 2-2, the motion was denied. On the second motion, the vote remained the same except that Skiff voted nay and the motion was denied. The same vote was had in the final motion and was denied.

“I really think this is a smart financial decision,” Tollefson said. “I’ve ran the numbers that I have and I used very conservative numbers. I’ve used $25,000 and $30,000 to buy buses instead of $40,000 or $50,000...and it still doesn’t work. I feel that I’ve done a very thorough job of disproving this.

By law, the call for new bids must be publicized for 21 days (see public notice on page 12.) On Monday night the Malta School Board held a special meeting to approve the request for new bids. The motion passed. The bids will be considered at the next school board meeting in August.

During the Superintendent potion of the school board meeting, Kuehn said that the boiler project at the elementary school should be done by the time school starts in August, but that if it isn’t fully complete the work left to be done will not be an intrusion on the students starting school.