Casa Grande Union High School will be the test case for a possible change in district landscaping services.
The CGUHS District Governing Board, which contracts for food and transportation services, wants to find out if grounds-keeping services can be performed by an outside vendor at a lower cost, with better results.
Superintendent Shannon Goodsell said CGUHS found itself at the beginning of the school year with one groundskeeper and two positions open. Facilities Director Tim Mace thought it might be cheaper to keep the groundskeeper on campus during the day and hire a contract vendor to do the rest of the work.
Goodsell said school officials calculated the salaries and benefits to find the break-even point and published a request for proposals.
Mace, Goodsell and CGUHS Principal Chris Paulson formed a
committee to write criteria for scoring the proposals. Four companies responded to the 42-page request for proposals.
Goodsell said Epifini Landscaping Inc. submitted the best ideas and bid.
“Overall we think we’re going to be able to save anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000 (this year) on this idea,” he said.
Epifini is a Casa Grande business owned by former CGUHS science teacher Greg Perez. Perez estimated it would take a total of 60 man hours a week to keep the campus looking good. The contract runs for one year.
“It’s a pretty active campus,” Perez said. “Those fields are going non-stop.”
He will meet with coaches to find out how they want the fields to look and how tall they want the grass. His crews also will take care of the irrigation system from the valves down.
“If we hit a sprinkler head, we pay for it,” Perez said.
Mace expects “it to look like the best campus in the state.”
If the one-year trial goes well, two more annual renewals are possible before the district would have to go out for bid again, Perez said.
Board member Scott Lehman asked if the district could save more money if the contract were extended districtwide.
“Considerable,” Perez responded.
Board member Donna Zimmerman said the board has had bad experiences with contractors before.
“But it’s nice it’s a local contractor,” Lehman said. “We know what’s going on.”
Lehman asked if the district could sell its landscaping equipment if the contract were extended to the other campuses.
Mace said he would like the district to keep its landscaping equipment for the time being.
“If in six months, it is degrading,” he said, “well then, we’ve got to go a different route.” If, however, the year goes well, the district could think about selling its equipment.
Zimmerman said that if the district sold its equipment and a vendor did not work out five years from now, the district would be forced to contract with another vendor — just like it has with buses.
“The resale value is not incredibly substantial,” Goodsell said.
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