Manatee County school board must follow state law in awarding contracts

I am writing to respond to the the letter to the editor on Dec. 10 by Mr. Warren Simonds who criticizes the Manatee County School District and School Board for decisions made about construction of the new high school to be located in Parrish.

As will be reported at Tuesday’s board workshop, the committee who evaluated the submitted bids has chosen Gilbane Construction (Sarasota) as construction manager and SchenkelSchultz (also a Sarasota office) as the architect with whom the district will now enter into negotiations to do the work.

Another larger point, and you can thank the Florida Legislature for this gem, is that it is now ILLEGAL for local governments to include a local preference multiplier in any evaluation matrix for school building projects. The school district does have the power, however, to make it a policy to direct as much work to local firms as we can without violating state laws.

This current school board, and boards in the past, have continually expressed the desire to keep our money local and hire local firms. One does not need to “wonder” if keeping money local will be a regional benefit. We all know this to be the case. Local firms and their employees, like the subcontractors who the construction manager will hire to do a great majority of the work, will greatly benefit.

What is not helpful, to the school district and the community, is an opinion in the local paper which uses blantantly false accusations (”they’re sending money out of state”) and innuendo (”I supported the sales tax extension but now they’re mismanaging our money”) as an outlet for sour grapes.

This story was originally published December 12, 2016 at 4:41 AM with the headline "Manatee County school board must follow state law in awarding contracts."