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School bid-opening process questioned; officials make a change

JANESVILLE — The Janesville School District changed its bid-opening procedure for an upcoming project after questions were raised.

The move affects the bid opening for the rebuilding of the running track and football field behind Craig High School. It comes after a local contractor and school board member questioned the process for a similar project at Parker High School last year.

Steve Kennedy of Rock Road Companies alerted school board member Tim Cullen, who asked questions about the process at the school board meeting Tuesday.

Doug Bunton did not have the answers Tuesday, but he e-mailed a memo to school board members Wednesday, admitting that bids for the project at Parker were opened in another city with no school district employee present.

Cullen said that process should raise eyebrows.

“If somebody can open bids, with tax money involved, and nobody from the school district observes, how do you know how many bids were opened?” Cullen said.

No one has alleged that the winner of the Parker bid won the bid unfairly.

“I’m not concerned that anything was done inappropriately by anybody. That is not the case at all,” Bunton said.

Bunton said Thursday that he did not know that the Parker bids had been opened in the office of the project architect, Rettler Corp. of Stevens Point, without a school employee to witness it.

Maintenance department employees arranged for the bid opening, Bunton said, and he now has instructed his staff that bid openings always should include a district employee.

The bid opening for the Craig project was scheduled the same way as the Parker project, but Bunton said he changed it when he found out this week. The opening now will take place at the district office with employees present.

There is no school policy or law that requires a school employee be present at bid openings, Bunton said.

It’s a common practice to have the project designer on hand and to open bids in the designer’s office, Bunton said, but his “general departmental operating practice over the years” always has been to have a school employee present.

The bids on the Craig and Parker expansion projects, for example, occurred at the district office in his presence, Bunton said.

The bid documents for the Parker project listed the place and time of the opening, and any bidder could have attended the opening, Bunton said.

Bunton said he could not recall any bid opening at which a district employee wasn’t present, but he couldn’t be sure that it never happened before.

Bunton and Superintendent Tom Evert said they would not object if the school board wanted to establish a policy for bid openings.

Cullen also criticized the revelation on a public document that Kennedy was the origin of the complaint. The document was a memo to board members that includes Evert’s notes on agenda items.

Including the name could deter others from coming forward with concerns about school business, Cullen said.

Evert said that in his 14 years on the job, he has “never been told by the board to exclude a name when public business is being transacted.”

However, if board members want to change a procedure, “it’s their call.”

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Here’s information on the Parker High School track and field rebuild project, completed last year, provided by school district business director Doug Bunton.

-- Cost: $475,869.

-- Description: Replace asphalt track. Install irrigation system. Recrown the football field and build a track drainage system. Rebuild shot put, discus, long jump and high jump areas.

-- History: The Parker and Craig tracks and fields had not seen any taxpayer-funded improvements since the tracks got a new coat of asphalt 22 years ago.

-- Landscape designer: Rettler Corp., whose specialties include tracks and athletics fields.

-- Bidders: Phenco of Neenah and Rock Road Companies of Janesville were the only companies to bid the entire project. Three others bid portions of the project. Phenco won with the low bid.