LEWISTON – The School Committee on Monday approved another five-year contract with Hudson Bus Lines in Lewiston. It contains modest increases even though fuel prices have more than doubled since the last contract was signed five years ago.
“It’s actually about where we’d hoped it would be,” Business Manager Dean Flanagin said.
Lewiston schools received bids from Hudson and First Student, a national school bus chain with an office in Augusta. Hudson, which had the last five-year contract, bid $2.2 million less than First Student.
On Monday, School Committee members voted unanimously to sign with Hudson. School officials, not the committee, will now decide whether to spend about $8.3 million for a contract with Hudson that includes fuel, or $7.8 million for a Hudson contract that doesn’t include fuel.
Unlike Hudson, the school system is a nonprofit and doesn’t have to pay taxes on gasoline and diesel. Buying its own bus fuel could save the school system about $38,000 a year at today’s gas prices.
That savings could dwindle or disappear, however, if fuel costs went dramatically higher.
Flanagin is recommending the school system go with the contract that doesn’t include fuel. That agreement, plus fuel, would increase the school system’s busing costs by about 5 percent.
Slightly more than half of Lewiston’s 4,400 students take a bus. Hudson runs about 60 buses for the school system, including 34 for elementary and middle school students, 20 for special education students and four for high school students. The buses are free for younger students, but high-schoolers must pay 60 cents a trip. That cost will not go up under this contract.
Comments are no longer available on this story