Thomas Breen photo
Eco-Urban Pioneers President Abdussabur on Monday.
Eco-Urban Pioneers (EUP), a locally owned custodial company, has gone to court to fight a decision by the Board of Education to go with a Massachusetts-based company called S.J. Services rather than renew its former school cleaning contract.
The lawsuit, which names the city, New Haven Public Schools, and Board of Ed as defendants, was filed in state Superior Court on Aug. 24. It can be read in full here and here.
EUP’s legal complaint argues that the city allegedly “violated the terms of the Bid requirements” for the cleaning contract because it :
• Allowed S.J. Services to submit a bid that did not include a “separate bid matrix’ as required”;
• It appointed a committee member “who had a conflict, allowed the individual to sit in on the Bid presentations of several vendors, including the affiant, and then had the Committee member recuse himself prior to the Bid vote”;
• “Despite being a Committee of five members, it ended up being a Committee of two members in violation of the procedure it established;”
• “The scoring matrix was not completed with scores relative to the 100 points assigned to each proposal scoring requirement”;
• Board of Ed members were allegedly not provided with copies of the scoring sheet by the committee members;
• “The Bid Summary specifically states that the Bid will not be awarded solely on price, yet on information and belief, price was the only consideration used to differentiate Eco Urban Pioneers LLC’s proposal from SJ Services’ proposal”;
• And the city “did not properly evaluate Eco Urban Pioneer LLC’s proposal relative to City Code Section 2 – 483 in that Eco Urban provided a lower cost proposal that the City did not properly evaluate.”
The lawsuit claims that EUP filed a “protest” on Aug. 18 relative to the bid award, and that, on Aug. 22, the city’s corporation counsel “denied” that protest.
“If the City were to award a contract pursuant to this RFP, the City would be in violation of General Statutes 7 – 148, et seq.,” the lawsuit concludes.
Therefore, the company is asking the court for a “temporary or permanent injunction prohibiting and restraining the defendants from awarding a contract pursuant to RFP 22 – 05-1459” as well as for “any other damages as the court shall deem appropriate.”
NHPS’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this lawsuit. The city, NHPS, and the Board of Ed have not yet filed a formal legal response in the court case.
Eco-Urban Pioneers President Shafiq Abdussabur — who resigned from his first term as city alder earlier this year in order to pursue renewal of the NHPS custodial contract with his firm – spoke about his firm’s relationship with the Board of Ed, at a hearing held in City Hall Monday night.
The hearing, about Board of Ed contracting in general, was held by the Board of Alders Finance Committee.
Abdussabur read from a prepared statement at the hearing. (Click here to read that statement in full.)
“For the past eight years, EUP is extremely proud to have employed hundreds of residents, primarily from underserved communities and to have provided clean schools with zero shutdowns due to cleaning over the last tumultuous years to include cleaning through the pandemic,” Abdussabur read.
“As a small and ambitious locally owned and Black owned company, Eco-Urban Pioneers was able to meet the hiring demands of the New Haven community, consistently maintain and meet our payroll demands, maintained good standing with SEIU 32BJ, and perform our contract with quality service.”
Abdussabur referred obliquely to the decision to hire S.J. Services instead of renew EPU’s contract.
“If we are promoting and development New Haven minority-owned business and New Haven-based business,” he said, “surely the recent and current actions of the NHBOE to include the mayor are in direct opposition in addressing New Haven’s battle with economic inequality, systematic racism and generational wealth.”
NHPS Chief of Staff Michael Finley said during an early August Board of Education meeting that “cost was not the only contributing factor, [but] it was a major consideration” when the school system was determining which company to award the cleaning contract to.
S.J. Services bid came in at roughly $5.3 million compared to Eco-Urban’s $5.7 million, coming out to a $361,198.88 difference for the one-year deal.
If the contract is renewed for the additional four years (until 2027), the total cost would come in at $31,539,173.54 for Eco-Urban and $27,763,144.89 for S.J. Services, making for an 11.96 percent difference.
Their work was poor, the schools were dirty, they lost the contract.
Some people just don't wanna get off the gravy train.
Playing the race card does not excuse poor job performance.