A company that has been sued in more than a dozen jurisdictions for knowingly selling faulty synthetic turf won a $584,000 bid to replace Tucson High Magnet School’s football field turf.
The TUSD Governing Board approved the bid by Field Turf USA in a unanimous vote Tuesday night.
None of the board members raised any questions over the bid, even though it came in at almost 50 percent higher than the district’s highest initial estimates, and the company’s history of facing lawsuits from schools that have bought their faulty products shows up in a simple Google search.
District officials and board members are now questioning their decision and considering bringing the item back for a new bid after the Arizona Daily Star pointed out Field Turf’s history of being sued.
TUSD board President Mark Stegeman said Wednesday that the board should be held accountable for the vote, and in a perfect world board members would have caught the problem beforehand. But in reality, the district signs off on so many procurement contracts that unless he has some reason to suspect the company is problematic, he assumes the district’s staff has vetted any companies with bids before TUSD.
“I don’t want to criticize staff without knowing all the circumstances, but I think for a large contract, part of due diligence would include doing a Google search on the vendor to see if anything comes up,” he said.
He noted that as long as the district hasn’t paid the company, there’s nothing stopping the board from revisiting the vote and awarding the contract to another company.
The $584,000 bid does not cover the cost of fixing the drainage system that caused historic flooding on Tucson High’s football field last year and damaged the turf. The school district is suing both the city and county, saying their drainage systems, not the school’s, are at fault for the flooding.
TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo originally predicted the project would cost somewhere between $250,000 and $400,000. District officials now estimate the cost will be just short of $1 million, including the drainage work that still needs to go out for a bid.
Stegeman said that price jump should have thrown up red flags for board members.
Faced with questions about the company after the board meeting, Trujillo said it was the first he heard about the company’s checkered history.
“That’s something we’ll take a serious look at,” he said, noting that if there is a problem with the vendor, the district can rescind its approval of the company’s bid.
Trujillo said the district sought bids only from vendors that are already on a state-approved vendor list and assumed because Field Turf was on the list, it had already been vetted.
On Wednesday, Trujillo said the company told him they haven’t sold the defective turf since 2010, and company representatives directed Trujillo to several satisfied recent clients, including Arizona State University. TUSD would be purchasing a different type of turf, he said. But given the business’s history, Trujillo is delaying the contract until the district has a chance to further review the issue.
“My concerns are strong enough to hold off on issuing an award letter. But out of respect for the procurement process, the amount of services and the amount of money on the table, I think we owe it to this potential vendor to do a thorough and exhaustive review of how they handled these lawsuits,” he said.
A six-month investigation by a New Jersey media outlet found Field Turf “made millions selling high-end turf to taxpayers in towns and schools across N.J. and the U.S. after knowing it was falling apart.”
The series, published by N.J. Advance Media in December 2016, detail how company executives misled customers and attempted to cover up revelations that their turf was falling apart much faster than promised.
“Despite candid, internal email discussions about their overblown sales pitches, executives never changed their marketing campaign for Duraspine fields. ... A lawyer warned that some of those internal emails could be damaging in a lawsuit, and an executive sought to delete them. An IT consultant refused, calling it a ‘possible crime,’” N.J. Advance Media reported.
The company continued selling the products to incognizant school districts and municipalities well after warning flags appeared, the report concluded.
In the report, N.J. Advance Media said the company “rejected accusations that they misled or defrauded customers” and company officials said “failures came primarily in places like California and Texas, where intense ultraviolet radiation caused the product to weaken and break down after only a few years of use.”
“There have been 15 lawsuits filed against the country’s leading maker of artificial sports fields, FieldTurf, as a direct result of N.J. Advance Media’s investigation,” reporters wrote in a follow-up to their original series.
In an email Thursday, company officials said they “have been responsive to our customers experiencing issues with their fields and we have not hid from this problem.” It also noted that the issues with their Duraspine turf has not impacted safety.
Steve Kozachik, the University of Arizona’s Associate director of athletics in charge of facilities and managing capital projects, said the Duraspine Field Turf installed at the UA’s Jimenez Practice Field in 2010 is holding up fine, and the school has used Field Turf on fields since, including the Arizona Stadium.
“Field Turf is a major player on the market, not a mom and pop operation,” he said, noting the university is so satisfied with the company, they’re installing it on their indoor field.
TUSD didn’t immediately provide copies of the bids but said Field Turf was the lowest of four bidders and that its turf comes with a 10-year warranty.
The district hoped to have the project finished by the next school year, though that timeline may be thrown into question with the possibility of rebidding the contract, and plans to clean the existing damaged turf for Tucson High’s graduation in May.
School board members have repeatedly expressed concern that the issue has languished, putting in question the district’s ability to finish construction.
Trujillo previously said that because of time constraints, the district decided to put the project up for a “mini-bid” or cooperative contract bid rather than a full request-for-proposal bid, which would have required more thorough vetting of the vendor. Under cooperative contract bids, the school district puts out the bid to state-approved vendors.
Stegeman said in hindsight, trusting the approved vendor list was a mistake.
“They tend to take these state-approved vendors as gospel, and I think it’s too optimistic. And maybe this is the example that will make that point.”
