The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Vendor failure will hike cleaning costs in U-46

By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 is prepared to vote on $10.2 million in expenditure items at its upcoming meeting on Monday, July 19. The items were presented on June 21.
  The largest item, costing $10 million from the operations and maintenance fund, is a three-year contract with RNA Facilities Management for cleaning services.
  The district was already contracted with ABM, which has been providing cleaning services since at least 2017, and was extended in 2019 through the 2023-2024 fiscal year. The proposal states that the district has had “repeat concerns regarding ABM’s staffing levels and issues regarding work performance,” and ABM has acknowledged to the district its failure to meet the contract.
  Instead of terminating that contract, U-46 will retain ABM for cleaning “all elementary and auxiliary buildings,” the proposal states, and use RNA for secondary buildings.
  “While U-46 Legal Counsel agreed that district administration has the grounds to terminate the contract in entirety, administration would instead like to remove the secondary buildings from ABM’s portfolio and allow them to stabilize their business model,” the proposal states.
  This proposal increases the original 2021-2022 to 2023-2024 fiscal years’ costs from $15.9 million to $18 million.
  To taxpayers, they’re left to pay an additional $2.1 million for ABM’s failure to live up to the contract which the U-46 administration appears to be fine with and board member Melissa Owens called a “great resolution” to the issue which “I’m sure that took some negotiating.”
  The district is asking for $208,351 (education, operations and maintenance and transportation funds) for a contract renewal with Jellyvision Lab, Inc. for its virtual health insurance benefits counselor for staff as well as $48,720 (education fund) with Baragar Systems for its enrollment projection, staffing and mapping software.
  Also set for a vote is a resolution regarding the district’s list of authorized depositories which include PMA Securities, the Illinois School District Liquid Asset Fund and JP Morgan Chase.
  “This is an annual item,” said Dale Burnidge, director of financial services. “Once a year, we bring this list forward to the board, and these are the same depositories that we’ve been using.”
  Former board member Phil Costello raised the issue of a lack of a competitive process regarding depositories, and that issue remains.