West Deptford Busing Stays With DeHart

, with its sprawling bus yard on Crown Point Road, has run bus routes through West Deptford for as long as the district has existed.

That won't change for at least another year, after the school board approved a new contract Monday with the company after opening bidding on transportation for the first time in eight years.

Despite the fact that four other companies showed interest and picked up bid information, DeHart was the only one who submitted a bid by the Friday deadline, coming in at $1,799,345.56, which was about $95,000 over what the district originally budgeted for busing.

“They got a good deal,” DeHart president Dennis Noon said of the new contract, which covers more than 100 routes throughout the township, which DeHart serves with 35 to 40 of the 85 buses in the company's fleet.

The new deal gives the school district the option to renew at the current Consumer Price Index increase, provided the company agrees to that increase, business administrator William Thompson said.

While the vote was unanimous in favor of the bid, several members of the public took issue with the new contract.

Ernest Kraus took the board to task for what he called a short bid window, questioning whether 10 days–the bid period required by state law–is enough time for companies to put together a submission, especially given the contract was for just under $2 million.

“I think if you're interested in saving money, that you should look at extending time,” Kraus said. “Why cut the period short like that?”

Thompson said the bid period's length hasn't been an issue in the other bids he's been involved with as business administrator, and Christopher Strano, the board's president, called the ten days more than enough for a transportation contract.

While there were no other bids, Noon said several other bus company representatives came to the bid opening on Friday to see what the low bid would be, and added that, in a similar bidding process for East Greenwich's transportation, DeHart's bid was well below the competition–more than 30 percent below, according to East Greenwich school board minutes.