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City struggling to hire body hauler PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Sunday, 23 July 2006
Chicago, IL--The Daley administration is apparently having a tough time finding a contractor to handle one of the city's most unpleasant tasks: picking up dead bodies.
A three-year, $1.4 million-a-year contract -- at the center of controversy after a mix-up that sent the wrong bodies to funeral homes -- is being re-bid for the third time in eight months.


City Hall has also reversed its earlier decision to divide Chicago into two geographic areas and select a different contractor for each region.


Instead, Round 3 calls for a single contractor to transport bodies from death scenes or hospitals to the medical examiner's office. Funeral homes are responsible for the final leg of the journey.


Brian Higgins, president of GSSP Enterprise Inc., the city's existing contractor, had argued that dividing the city into two regions would have opened the door to inconsistent, inexperienced service and to funeral homes with a blatant conflict of interest. City Hall apparently agreed.


"Funeral homes have been known to hustle bodies -- to lead families into going to their funeral home or to a home they're affiliated with," Higgins told the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this year


No choice but to re-bid


Karen Bates, a spokeswoman for the Department of Procurement Services, offered no explanation for the city's about-face in bids due back next week.


She would say only that the contract is being re-bid -- for the third time since December -- because two of the three companies vying for the business submitted bids "deemed non-responsive."


The specifications stipulate that there be a "primary and secondary" selection to prevent dead bodies from piling up in the event that the primary contractor is unable to perform. So the city had no choice but to re-bid the contract, Bates said.

The Sun-Times reported last spring that the Ohio company at the center of the body mix-up had agreed to terminate its $1.4 million-a-year contract early. Higgins said he was losing money on the deal because City Hall overestimated the number of bodies. As for the body mix-up, Higgins said, "I transported two bodies that particular day. They were both properly tagged. Somehow they got released to the wrong funeral homes."

SOURCE:  http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi?getReferrer=http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dead19.html
 
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