West Bloomfield School Board decision

The West Bloomfield School Board made a curious decision Monday night to award a large contract to an out-of-state company that was not the low bidder by some measures. I own a local company that participated in the RFP process and have done business for the district for many years. I believe that the Consultant, Plante Moran, is culpable to a certain extent but none of the board members would challenge the recommendation. The bid results can be found here: https://v3.boardbook.org/Public/PublicItemDownload.aspx?ik=33884628 My company partnered with VDS to complete the response. VDS is a local company as well. Here is an email that I shot off to the board after the meeting concluded. Well, tonights meeting was a stunner to say the least. I watched an elected school board vote to award a million dollar contract to an out of state company, when a local vendor was offering a comparable solution at a lower price. I am still trying to figure out what happened because the justification was lacking to say the least. Diane mentioned that the evaluation committee thought is was risky to deal with 2 vendors for the installation phase of the project. Going with a one vendor solution avoids finger pointing. What she failed to mention is that my company, Groundwork0, was only responsible for 2% of the submitted proposal. The other 98% of the contract was to be fulfilled by VDS. So I'm not sure how carefully she examined this issue. She claimed that her committee did a drill-down evaluation. But her main point of contention was pretty much irrelevant, considering the balance of responsibility. Diane were you aware of this? Dave didn't offer any analysis of the RFP, he just was hopeful that in the future the board would have more time to evaluate large million dollar contracts. (me too Dave, well said) I heard someone say that we just have to trust our consultants on this, thats why we hired them. Nelson was on the right track with his questioning of the maintenance costs. The district will have to pay for enhanced maintenance, your consultants just haven't told you how much yet. That will come when the manufacturers warranty expires about 3 months after sign-off, and It will be expensive. And that's about all I heard by way of explanation as to why $1,000,000 of Michigan taxpayer money is headed to Illinois. What I was hoping to hear is one board member, just one, defend the local vendor. Not one of you had the guts to say on record that you were uncomfortable with this recommendation. You all need to review your campaign platforms and see if your actions tonight coincide with what you promised the taxpayers. I'm pretty sure that none of you got elected by promising to "steer as much business as possible, to our friends in Illinois" You reap what you sow See you around town, neighbors.