Center City District to clean concourses

SEPTA has hired the Center City District to clean the subway and rail concourses between Suburban Station and Eighth Street, angering the current janitorial contractors, who say they do it more cheaply.

One of the jilted janitors was instrumental in the federal indictment late last year of T. Milton Street Sr., the former state senator and brother of Mayor Street.

The SEPTA board on Thursday, without discussion, approved a no-bid, three-year, $5.1 million contract with the district for cleaning concourse areas owned by SEPTA. Concourse areas owned by the city also will be cleaned by the district under a separate contract with the city.

SEPTA spokesman Jim Whitaker said yesterday that no bidding was required because the district is a municipal authority.

The district, using a subcontractor, OneSource Services Inc., will take over the janitorial responsibilities when the current contract expires on Aug. 1.

The current cleaning vendors, Clean-Tech Services Inc. and V-Tech Services Inc., complained to the SEPTA board Thursday that they were not given a chance to compete with the district. Michael Samschick of Clean-Tech and Thanh Nguyen of V-Tech said their firms could do more work for less money.

In a letter to SEPTA last month, an attorney for Clean-Tech and V-Tech said the two firms' contract with SEPTA called for them to be paid $1.4 million per year, about $300,000 less than the district will get. In a response this week, SEPTA's lawyer, Nicholas Staffieri, disputed that, citing additional costs in the current contract, including a July 1 increase in the minimum wage that would raise the annual payment to $1.62 million.

V-Tech and Nguyen played a pivotal role in the federal indictment late last year of Milton Street.

Prosecutors contend that Street, as a $30,000-a-month consultant for Philadelphia Airport Services, took a $50,000 payment from Nguyen to help V-Tech win a maintenance contract at Philadelphia International Airport and give a portion of the profits back to Street. The contract was never awarded, and the $50,000 was not returned, according to a lawsuit filed by Nguyen, who said Street also failed to pay back a $30,000 loan.