$1.2 Million for Wootton High School No-Bid Artificial Turf

Look what's on the Consent Agenda for the October 9, 2012, Board of Education meeting! The BOE won't discuss this purchase, but we will!  


4.0 Consent Items
PROCUREMENT
4.1.1 Contracts of $25,000 or More (A)#
FACILITIES
4.2.1 Thomas S. Wootton HS—Artificial Turf (A)#
BUDGET

"Consent Items" means that these are NO DISCUSSION items for the Board of Education. 

We know that MCPS pays top dollar for artificial turf, so the Wootton artificial turf field will cost at least $1.2 million dollars.  $1.2 million is a trivial amount of money in the MCPS budget and not worth the time of the Board of Education, so no discussion needed.  

We also know that MCPS does not put these procurements out for competitive bids so the project will use FieldTurf artificial turf (they have exclusive deal with MCPS), and the same group of companies will install the field as have done all the other MCPS fields.  The artificial turf purchase won't be put out for competitive bids, and neither will the services of the multiple construction companies involved.

Best of all, we know this means another 120 TONS of crumb rubber dumped into our environment!  And, Wootton High School's football field sits right next to a county stream! 120 tons of crumb rubber running off into that stream will make for a great community service project for students.  They can get SSL (student service learning) hours for picking the little crumbs out of the stream by hand because the County Council has now declared that the chemicals in crumb rubber are hazardous to our streams and lakes!

Aren't you glad the BOE isn't going to waste anyone's time discussing this purchase? This purchase is on the BOE Agenda for one meeting, and one meeting only.  This Agenda item will not lie on the table until the next meeting.  There will be no opportunity for public comment on the proposal, whatever it is.

We are MCPS. We are flush with cash and good ideas for keeping students busy.