I am writing this letter in response to the article that was published in your newspaper, The Citizen, on March 29 titled “Local TV station creates turf war with Fayette school board.” There are numerous inaccuracies in the story written by Ben Nelms, some of which malign Sprinturf, without giving Sprinturf the opportunity to tell its side of the story.
First, you inaccurately state that, “Fox 5 said it repeatedly attempted to reach the school board about the choice to award the contract to Precision Turf for $3.06 million, approximately $500,000 less than the bid by Sprinturf.” The Sprinturf bid was actually $500,000 less than the bid by Precision Turf.
Second, you simply decided to publish the superintendent’s letter that he wrote to his faculty and parents that had numerous inaccuracies. We feel strongly that if you are going to publish these comments which specifically names Sprinturf, that you should get our comments and our side of the story.
Chief among these inaccuracies is Superintendent Barrow’s comment that Sprinturf approached the media to push an agenda that was self-serving. Sprinturf did not approach the media and this was part of an on-going story the media was conducting on biased, unexplainable procurement practices by public entities that waste millions of dollars of taxpayers money.
Seems like that’s the story you should also be interested in publishing to inform the citizens of Fayette County of the waste that is happening in their own community. Nowhere in the country do we see these unexplained waste of public dollars driven by poor public procurement practices with no oversight.
I ask that you do a follow-up story to correct the facts and to allow us to correct the maligning comments mentioned in this story.
John Bogosian
COO, Sprinturf
Atlanta, Ga.
