Clarification

One of our first recommendations was to put together an RFP the day the current airport agreement was renewed, July 1st, 2004. The three extension of the 1st five year agreement was an opportunity for ORH to market itself via an RFP and pick the highest/best bidder over the next three years. In other words MassPort had bought us three more years.

I even submitted a letter to the Airport Commission last February (check the minutes) regarding Airport Privatization, since Chairman Nemeth told me that was the only way to make things happen, having to explain to him what it meant. Remember the "proper channels"?? That got dismmissed as quickly as it was reviewed.

Since that time the current concensus (specifically IMG) was that nobody would be interested, so puting it out to bid was a not even considered and we should simply extend the current agreement or long-term/sell ORH to MassPort. Between these two options, we might as well outright sell or long-term lease ORH to MassPort. Continuing the current agreement thatnow has an 8 year track history of failure, increase debt (2 million per year) and no commercial service would be senseless. This did not meant that an RFP for the entire airport was still not the number 1 recommendatio. How could IMG simply say that there would be not interest without putting out an RFP?

Bottom line we should, even now, be putting together an RFP for the entire airport with a front page story in the Wall Street Journal.. In the end if MassPort has the best bid, after a well publicized RFP, then all of these discussions would be moot??? Without a competitive bidding process (RFP), the question then becomes how will we know if we have gotten the best possible offer for the tax-payers of Worcester, the owners of ORH???