This year has been very educational, we won the bid for U.S.D.A. Commodities for Pasco
County and Suncoast Food Bank challenged the bid results (they already had 3 counties). They were able to take the bid
away from The Volunteer Way Food Bank. They claimed several reasons like our warehouse space, our refrigeration, space,
our air conditioning and the security on our trailers on our property. The Department of Agriculture sent an inspector
down to check these things out that they said they observed at our food bank. When the inspector measured and checked
all their issues, he found that everything was as we put in our successful bid. They also claimed that we did not have
content insurance on our warehouse ten months prior to the start of the contract. Well, the Department of Agriculture
said they have the authority to give certain bidders a five point bonus even if they do not need the content insurance before
the date of contract. The Department of Agriculture said the first bid they only subjected having the content insurance
but this bid you have to have the content insurance if you want to receive an extra five points. The only problem with
that is that they did not notify everyone of the content insurance the first bid or the second bid. Now, one organization
has 91% of all the Counties in Florida, which they requested in 2002. This was a great decision for the Department of
Agriculture if they were running a business, but it was a very bad decision if they are trying to feed hungry people.
Well, we did the best we could and went through all the legal channels we could and we
lost. I must say that the Judge and the Attorney for the State gave us all the time to present our side of the case,
but I just did not have enough knowledge. We have been serving nutritionally challenged for over twenty (20) years,
so we will be hear for another twenty (20) years and may be able to fix what has been broken.
We came away with a lot of knowledge and understanding of how some of these thing work.
This will help us to get things back on track. We have already taken some steps to correct some of the things we believe
will only hurt the people this program is supposed to help. This did not happen over night and will not be fixed over
night. We need to let all concerned Departments of Government and Federal and State politicians of the issues smaller
faith-based and community hunger relief charities have. The smaller hunger relief charities help feed the majority of
hungry people in Florida. We will be speaking on behalf of hundreds of hunger relief organizations in Florida that serve
hundreds of thousands of nutritionally challenged residents in Florida.
Keep us in your prayers, we have a long way to go, but we will persist and right will
prevail.
