Making Hollister Look Small

There were no winks, no nods. That’s not how these things work
in small towns. Group think takes over, and there’s no need for
anything to be said. It’s a conspiracy, but of silence, not words,
of omission more than commission. Shared assumptions and biases are
insidious.
There were no winks, no nods. That’s not how these things work in small towns. Group think takes over, and there’s no need for anything to be said. It’s a conspiracy, but of silence, not words, of omission more than commission. Shared assumptions and biases are insidious.

That’s how I believe it happened, how the Hollister School District board chose to reject a bid from Gilroy Unified School District to provide pupil transportation that would have saved Hollister taxpayers $130,000 a year.

Incredibly bad legal advice didn’t help.

If you missed Brett Rowland’s fine investigative report in the Free Lance (“Questionable Ride for HSD Bus Contract,” Oct. 15), here’s what happened:

Last February, Hollister School District officials opened bids to find that long-time local contractor Tiffany Transportation Services had been outbid by Gilroy. But did the HSD folks thank their lucky stars? Far from it.

Instead, they canceled the bids and went looking for legal grounds on which to declare Gilroy’s bid illegal, pulling every legal lever at their disposal despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Philosophical objections, wrapped in legalese, were raised about public entities not being allowed to compete with a private business for such contracts. But if there were any real legal support for this, Guy Bryant, HSD’s attorney, should have known it was overwhelmed by a preponderance of evidence and precedent.

As revealed in Rowland’s piece, there are some 50 school districts in California engaged in some kind of cooperative cross-district bus transportation arrangement – not to mention support from the state superintendent of schools and the attorney general.

Yet when this newspaper interviewed Bryant, he justified the decision to reject the Gilroy bid by saying: “This (cooperative busing) does not happen. I have never seen it. And I’ve been doing this for 10 or 15 years.”

Either Bryant was being willfully blind, was another victim of group think, or needs to go back to lawyer school. Whichever it is, HSD should ask for a refund.

Was this bid-rigging? Not in the old-fashioned, Chicago-style sense. They didn’t provide insider information, or conspire to physically scare off potential competitors. That’s not how it works in small towns with chips on their shoulders about more prosperous neighbors.

How does one escape the conclusion that Hollister’s inferiority complex vis-à-vis Gilroy got in the way of sound fiscal judgment? No one, it seems, wanted to be the one responsible for ending a 50-year relationship with the hometown team, Tiffany, and allowing Gilroy Unified School District buses to roll daily through the streets of Hollister with local kids inside.

Hollister School District officials may have gotten lousy legal advice, but we shouldn’t blame the lawyers. They drank the Kool-Aid, divined the desire of school administrators, and regurgitated the advice the client wanted. That’s what lawyers do.

Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that Gilroy decided to forego the second round of bids. They knew where they weren’t wanted.

Throughout it all, the loyalties of the bureaucracy were misplaced. Instead of looking out for taxpayers, HSD board members did their usual ostrich act. They looked the other way when they should have been exercising independent judgment and looking out for their students – and taxpayers.

But as long as Hollister remains politically parochial, as long as the word “Gilroy” is only spoken sotto voce, contracts that shortchange taxpayers will result.

What was needed here was a voice of reason, someone to say: “We can make this work with Gilroy, we’ll find a way, because saving money that can be better spent on our kids is the right thing to do.” Dr. Barranti, the former superintendent, could have played that role. So could C.R. Rogers, the district’s transportation coordinator, or any member of the board of trustees.

It bears emphasizing that whatever was wrong with the initial bid process could have been determined before the bids were opened. That they did all this only after opening the bids – and realizing Tiffany had lost – serves to heighten the suggestion of impropriety – or incompetence. Someone should have stepped up and said “This is wrong, this will look like we favored Tiffany.”

What’s done is done. But when it comes time for the district to explain teacher layoffs and more crowded classes, who will have the courage to say: “This was my fault”?

I’m glad Tiffany got the contract. Keeping the money local is good for Hollister. I only wish they’d gotten it fair and square. But the worst thing about this wasn’t the money. The worst thing these short-sighted bureaucrats did was make Hollister look small.