Release Date: August 26, 2009

Released By: Suffolk County Executive Office

Request for Proposals to Private Sector to Follow September 14 Session

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy announced that he will be hosting a meeting of superintendents and school board leaders from throughout the 69 school districts in Suffolk County for the purpose of discussing methods by which the County can facilitate the combining of non-educational functions which are germane to all of the districts within the county.

Levy has been championing the cause over the last two years of having schools consolidate various functions in a more efficient way to potentially save millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. The county executive noted that while it may be extremely difficult to muster the political will to consolidate actual districts, it would be much more palatable to effectuate a consolidation of specific functions, including food services, transportation, printing, security, and buildings and grounds, just to name a few.

The meeting is set for September 14, 2009 in the media room of the H. Lee Dennison Building. Levy has already sent letters to the school districts enlisting their support for the Request for Proposal that will be issued sometime in October.

Levy stated that the County will be reaching out to various vendors throughout the area to compete for the delivery of these services to many of these districts operating as a consortium. As an example, an RFP will be produced that will seek one food servicing vendor to provide food services to the cafeterias at a number of combined districts. The competing vendors would have to give a price for how much they would charge for the delivery of services for 10 districts, 20 districts, 30 districts, etc. After these prices are posted, these school districts would have the option of keeping their present system or joining the consortium to potentially save millions. The same type of RFP will be issued in the other fields as well.

Said Levy, “The consolidation of services germane to each of our 69 districts is a way in which we can lower costs for our taxpayers while not detrimentally impacting the high quality of education we have enjoyed for so long here on Long Island.”

---