Note: This help topic is out of date and currently archived.
Despite Howard County’s history of locally held contracts over past years, HCPSS has experienced a significant shortage of bus drivers necessary to cover all of the required routes over the past several years. The driver shortage fluctuated between approximately 85-95 drivers, short of what was required.
In addition, language in the existing contracts and RFPs greatly limited the school system’s ability to adjust or cancel contracts that were not being fulfilled. This alone required a new RFP to be created and issued.
The RFP was posted, and all transportation companies (new and existing providers) had the ability to submit a proposal and were encouraged to do so during meetings with HCPSS staff. HCPSS staff reviewed the submissions and chose the contracts that were best for the needs of the district. This included Zum, which is based in California. This company serves several major districts across the country and is confident they will be able to fill all required routes based on their competitive pay and the benefits packages they offer drivers. Only one local company, Tip Top Transportation, put in a bid and they were also awarded a contract. These two companies will serve 288 routes and the remaining routes will be served by other local contractors that HCPSS will continue to use under existing contracts to fulfill the routes that the newly awarded contracts will not be able to cover.
It would be misleading to try and compare prior contracts with new ones as it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. For instance, there are no longer fuel and mileage adjustments in the new contracts which often resulted in HCPSS paying much more than the budgeted amount. While this results in a higher budgeted number, it allows for more accurate budgeting. An example of this is the fuel adjustment required in FY22 due to the language in the existing contracts was an increase of $0.52 for 5,275,080 miles resulting in an additional $2.7M or 135% above the budgeted number based on a $0.40 estimate. In addition, HCPSS has also provided additional unbudgeted funding to our existing contractors to offer recruitment and retention bonuses for bus drivers. Additionally, there was a cost-of-living adjustment to current bus contractors in FY23 of 8.3%. The new contracts also give HCPSS the flexibility to increase or decrease the number of buses up to 10% within the existing pricing structure while the previous contracts required a new bid or temporary contracts and did not guarantee service for those adjustments.