Procurement selecting new Augusta EMS provider, month-to-month contract in place
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I wonder how many ambulance providers will be knocking down Richmond County’s doors to come in and lose money.
You hit the nail on the head. ARC’s “cluster – ” with Gold Cross even made the rounds in Atlanta, while we visited. Kind of hard to “spin”, when it hits the State capital media.
It would be worth filing a FOIA request to see the RFP that was sent to potential bidders for ambulance service. I predict the contract will be awarded to s shell corporation whose CEO is a minority, female who has no work experience involving ambulances and corporate governance. She will have covert business associations with one or more of the commissioners or the fire chief and will follow whatever directions she receives from those officials. ARC will subsidize the contractor’s purchase of 8 new ambulances at the cost to taxpayers of $1.6M. Response times and care quality will not improve. Bobby Williams will break an arm while patting himself on the back, and get the inaugural ride to the ER.
A FOIA was sent on this to procurement this morning.
here is the RFP if you are curious. https://the-augusta-press-storage.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/02/23-500_RFP.pdf
Thanks for posting this. I worked in the DOE weapons complex for corporations that supplied services and equipment to DOE sites. We had bid teams whose job was to dissect each RFP to identify all legal, equipment, labor, security, environmental, quality, and technical requirements, etc., to ensure the bid was compliant and the proposed cost, schedule, and technical approach could be executed and a fair profit made. Based on the RFP’s open-ended work scope, indeterminate work volume, and contractual latitude claimed by Augusta it will be difficult to bid this work and guarantee a profit. Based on the RFP wording and limited time to bid, I expect many pre-bid questions, ineffective clarifications, many no-bids, and delays of the contract award. I hope I am wrong.
There is someone in mind. I’d bet money on it.
Based upon what I posted above, I think your kind of “Provider” is the only kind that would apply. Probably would require “Hazardous Duty Pay” clause in the contract, just to deal with Commissioner Bobby Williams.
As for replacing the two trucks totaled there is no SPLOST 8 funding for the Fire Department. That usually is where Fire Department funding for trucks comes from.
Still the fiddling continues. The FOIA will be ignored or will be before Danny Craig or one of the other Judges. and one Commissioner will still make up for his ignorance by being stupid.
I can bet you one thing that will not happen to balance the budget..cut jobs or people that don’t do their jobs..I’d bet 7 million dollars of parks and recreation money on it…
There is at least one positive aspect of the entire mess surrounding the ambulance service. That is the fact that the bids submitted in response to the RFP will establish who was right. Was Gold Cross begging for undeserved monies or were they completely justified?
I’d be surprised if more than a few EMS submit a bid and got to love how the first thing out of the interim admistrator is to raise the mileage rate to cover the budget. Living on the back of the taxpayers again.
THE FIRST OPTION OUT OF THE INTERIM ADMINISTRATOR’s MOUTH WAS
“RAISE THE MILLAGE RATE”
to pay for the pending Ten Million ($10,000,000.00) Dollar budget shortfall created by the careless spending of the 2022 County Commissioners.
The best first step would be mass resignations of those holdover Commissioners from 2022 and the election of some fiscally responsible replacements .
The first budget cuts should be the salaries of the Commissioners.
The commissioners told her to say that.