Town officials on Tuesday re-hired a small Norwalk-based company to handle cleaning duties at several municipal buildings after having problems with a different franchise-model group.
The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 in favor of an approximately $95,000 contract to hire P&M Cleaning Services for 13 town buildings.
P&M “were the ladies that ran a company here in Norwalk that were actually used to clean our buildings for seven years and then they lost a bid last time because of the franchise-type relationships,” Buildings Superintendent Bill Oestmann told the selectmen at their regular meeting, held in Town Hall.
The town had “some problems” with that franchise-model company, JAN-PRO Cleaning & Disinfecting, Oestmann said.
“A lot of it stems from labor issues, getting quality work and getting people has been a bit of a problem,” he said. “So we tried to work through this for a couple of months with them, it’s just been very difficult and JAN-PRO, it’s a franchise, through corporate it’s franchised out. The original owner of the JAN-PRO in our area sold out to a place in Hartford and they’re not performing as well as we expect with all the current issues going on.”
JAN-PRO has agreed to a change-order in the contract that will see that company continue to handle about half of the cleaning services for the town, Oestmann said.
“At this point I’d like to try this having multiple companies do our cleaning services,” Oestmann said. The alternative is to create a new fixed cost by hiring on cleaning personnel to the municipal payroll.
Oestmann said he had P&M into Town Hall to discuss coming back on.
“They are on board,” he said. “They can handle it. Nice to have them local. They did a good job for us back then.”
He added, “Nice to have them local.”
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the $95,094.76 contract. The figure represents about half of the annual expenditure on cleaning services, Public Works Director Tiger Mann said.