School official: Putting contract to bid "would have taken several weeks"

In his first public statement about a $7.5 million no-bid emergency contract to provide surveillance cameras for dangerous city schools, Philadelphia Deputy Superintendent Leroy D. Nunery II explained on Monday how he and Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman decided to award the business to a Mount Airy company after another vendor had already begun work on the project.

"We made the executive decision to do a sole-source contract for professional services," Nunery said, rather than put the work out for competitive bids because that process "would have taken several weeks."

Equally important, Nunery said, was that the recipient of the contract - IBS Communications Inc. - was a minority-owned firm that would subcontract the work to "minority-owned electrical firms."

"Eighty percent of the kids in our schools are persons of color," Nunery said, "yet minority contractors receive only 20 percent of all contract awards. . . . Leveling the playing field benefits everyone in the city but most of all benefits our children as they look to their futures."

Nunery also assailed a report in Sunday's Inquirer that first detailed how Ackerman interceded and overruled her staff's recommendations and directed the work to IBS. He said it was "interesting" that the story "never questioned" why the job was awarded to the original vendor, Security and Data Technologies (SDT), which he described as "a majority-owned firm."

Nunery did not mention that SDT is eligible to receive an emergency no-bid contract because it is on a list of state-approved contractors to install and service the safety equipment, while IBS is not.

The School District's own rules require that a recipient of an emergency contract either be under contract to perform emergency work or on the state list. IBS did not qualify under either one of the requirements.

Last week, when The Inquirer contacted Nunery to request an interview, he said that the communications office would handle all inquiries and declined to comment. After Nunery's statement was released Monday via e-mail, efforts to interview him in person were unsuccessful.

In his statement, Nunery also made an oblique reference to a meeting held on Nov. 15 at which sources said the deputy superintendent demanded a detailed accounting of all school district work done by SDT. If SDT officials protested the award to IBS, Nunery said, he would personally make certain that the company never again received school business, sources said.

In his statement yesterday, Nunery said: "I have neither met nor worked directly with the principals of SDT, so the reporters' assertion that SDT would not get any additional business is inaccurate."

Left unaddressed in Nunery's statement was the report, based on sources with direct knowledge of school district business, that Ackerman in December 2009 had ordered that IBS receive a share of more than $700,000 in emergency work performed over a weekend at South Philadelphia High School.

The job - to locate on blueprints the newly installed security cameras - cost the school district more than $12,000, 12 times the $1,000 estimate provided by the original contractor.

In his criticism of the Inquirer story, Nunery said that IBS was formed in 1983, 17 years before the story said it was incorporated. But IBS's affidavits, on file with the city's Minority Business Enterprise Council, say the firm was established on Dec. 29, 2000.