R2014-52 ACCEPTING PROPOSAL OF MV TRANSPORTATION, INC. FOR TRANSIT SYSTEM MANAGEMENT

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served in an administrative role with no direct responsibility for bus operations, while First Transit's candidate has been a manager directly responsible for bus operations. Yet in the scoring sheets provided the MV candidate was ranked higher. Why have evaluation criteria if they are not to be followed? First Transit took the RFP requirements seriously and proposed a candidate with proven experience and education as required by the RFP. MV was given a score 41% higher than First Transit for the Qualifications of the General Manager, and while the scoring is by its nature somewhat subjective this is a huge differential for someone who possesses no college degree and has not be involved in direct vehicle operations for the last 12 years. • An evaluation area was for"Management Approach". This was to include "past performance, client relations..". Attached please find the Customer Survey completed by the City of Decatur for the First Transit contract in 2013. Aside from the overall high scores I would like to draw your attention to the specific question Q12-How likely would you be to recommend First Transit to another colleague or associate?" . On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest or most likely to recommend the score was a 9. It is incomprehensible to First Transit that weeks before the RFP was released the City of Decatur would highly recommend us to others but would then score First lower than a company that it had never worked with. In the meantime there had been no communications from the City of Decatur to First Transit about our performance that would have indicated any change in that original satisfaction with our company. In this scoring section MV was rated 14% higher despite the fact that Decatur had worked with First Transit and had expressed in satisfaction with our work and was prepared to highly recommend us to others. • The only purely quantitative scoring opportunity in the RFP was in the Management Fee. The firm with the lowest price would be awarded the full 20 points and then the other firm would receive a prorated score based on it's fee relative to the lowest fee. While MV was properly awarded the full 20 points, First Transit was only awarded 18.5 points or some 7.5% fewer points. In fact, First Transit's fee was only$11,213 more over a five year period or only 1.8% higher. This means First Transit should have correctly been given 98.2% of the full 20 points or 19.64 points, not 18.5. • A review of the scoring and a correction to award First Transit more points for a GM that had superior credentials, more points for its past performance with Decatur, and more points for the pricing can easily result in First Transit, not MV being the highest rated firm. It appears that the scoring may well have been artificially reduced to justify awarding to MV. • An additional matter regarding the cost of health care needs to be addressed. During the telephone interviews the First Transit team discussed with the City of Decatur team our plan for offering a new health plan to the Union that would result in a savings to both the union and to the City of Decatur in its operating costs. This was outlined in our cover letter of our proposal. We advised the committee that we expected significant savings to the City, upwards of$50,000 per year. There was considerable interest in this opportunity and we understood this to be a real advantage for our proposal. In fact, this savings when factored into the management fee means that the FT proposal was going to be less expensive than the MV proposal by a significant amount. Curiously, this matter was not considered in the evaluation, nor was there a follow-up or a BAFO by the City.