New Haven Independent

Auto-scrubbers and batteries came up too as the company’s representatives addressed the Board of Education’s Administration and Finance Committee Monday evening.

Andrew Butler is the local executive director for the Philadelphia-based conglomerate in New Haven, which manages physical plant, food services and energy for the public schools. Steve Percival (on the right in photo) is a relatively recent Aramark hire in charge of facilities management, that is, in part, supervision of the system’s custodians. Aramark’s contract with the Board of Ed is in jeopardy because of widespread complaints about labor management and food quality.

The issue at hand Monday night, though, was Aramark’s request for change order #1 to contract #20660. Translation: RoVic, Inc., a Manchester, Connecticut, company, is under contract for on-call custodial equipment repair services throughout the district. The contract’s original amount was $25,000. Aramark said there’s a lot of repairing to do and asked for another $10,000 added to the contract.

“It’s mainly,” said Percival, “for batteries for the battery-powered machines the custodians use. Each of these batteries costs $400, and each machine requires two to four batteries.”

Michael Nast (on the left in photo, with project manager Bob Lynn), the only BOE A & F committee member in attendance at the abbreviated meeting, asked Percival how this increase in the contract compared to last year’s. Percival said last year the increase was $12,000. That having been established, the committe voted to approve the change.

However, it’s unlikely that having more batteries and more RoVic around will mollify custodians who have in recent weeks repeatedly called for Aramark to be booted from the school system for poor management, unwise equipment purchases, and poor people skills.

A call after the meeting to Robert Montouri, president of the custodians’ local 287 of Council 4 of the American Federation of State, Municipal, and County Employees, revealed both a familiarity with RoVic and a measure of the ongoing tension between custodians and Aramark.

“We know RoVic very well,” said Montouri. “We have an upright vacuum that we’ve been using, and we’ve sent it in to RoVic for repairs three times.” This machine was not a battery-power one.

“The third time it came back, they had put in a new extension cord, which nobody asked for, by the way. After a few uses, the machine shorted out and the problem was the cord. As usual, we called Aramark, went through the usual channels and told them not to pay for the extension cord. I mean we still have the bill here, and I don’t know if they did pay for it or didn’t, because they never get back to us.”

Montouri went on to describe similar non-communication regarding purchasing of cleaning supplies, dumpsters, as well as repairs. He said they’ve had the same leak in his school’s roof, Ross/Woodward, for three years. “There’s just no follow-up with us, and no monitoring on all the outsourced work.”

The Aramark executives left the meeting as soon as their business was concluded.

In the past, Butler has referred local reporters to Aramark’s spokespersons in Philadelphia, who have disagreed with the union’s depiction of the company’s performance.

The BOE has chosen not to opt for an automatic renewal option with Aramark but to put the contract out to bid for both food services and facilities management.

Larry Dorman, spokesman for Council 4, said the ultimate goal of the local is for the custodians not to be supervised by any outside management company, but to be self-managed, as they were in the pre-Aramark era.

Montouri said he had no comment about Steve Percival, because he was so new to the job. That is part of the problem, he also suggested. “So much turnaround with their people, each of them has new ideas, new products to buy, new approaches, and they rarely consult us, the guys who are down there scrubbing the toilets.”

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