BOCES Milk Bidding (2018-MS-2)

Issued Date

July 27, 2018

We also released four letter reports to the following BOCES: Capital Region [pdf], Dutches [pdf], Onondaga-Cortland-Madison [pdf], and Monroe 2-Orleans [pdf].

Audit Objective

Determine whether Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) milk bidding practices foster competition.

Key Findings

Milk bidding practices used generally resulted in receiving multiple bids for participating school districts (districts).

Bidding cooperatively:

Maximized buying volume and allowed districts to receive the lowest price for chocolate fat free milk half-pints.
May have saved as much as $355,000 (15 percent) on fat free chocolate milk half pints in 2016-17, in places where it was not used to maximize buying volume.

BOCES officials’ responses to our findings and recommendation are in Appendix B.

Key Recommendation

Consider other bidding methods, such as a cooperative purchase, to maximize buying volume when procuring milk to help ensure the districts utilize the most cost effective purchasing option.

1 U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 7 Section 210.10
2 New York State General Municipal Law Section 103

Background

We audited the milk bidding practices at the following four BOCES: Capital Region (Capital), Dutchess, Onondaga-Cortland-Madison (OCM) and Monroe 2-Orleans (Monroe 2).

A BOCES is an association of component districts within a common geographic area. BOCES delivers various services to the districts at their request, including bidding services for milk. Refer to Appendix A for additional background information on each BOCES. Each BOCES’ purchasing agent is generally responsible for organizing the milk bids.

Districts must offer milk to students with every meal. ¹ To satisfy this requirement, districts whose milk expenditures exceed limits set under New York State General Municipal Law (GML)² must competitively bid. Districts may solicit bids directly, join a BOCES cooperative purchase or participate in the NYS Office of General Services (OGS) contract or other local government contract.

Quick Facts
	Component Districts	2016-17 Bid Participants
Capital	23	13
Dutchess	13	6
Monroe 2	9	20
OCM	23	27

This report summarizes the opportunities we identified to improve each BOCES’ milk bidding practices.

Audit Period

July 1, 2015 – November 15, 2017. We extended our scope period back to August 1, 2014 to review Capital BOCES’ prior bid award.