Scott Harrison, owner of H & H Transportation Inc., will resubmit a bid for a three-year contract with Eastern to run a two-bus shuttle service starting next fall semester.

“A mistake was made and I have to accept the blame for that,” Harrison said. “But I want to get a chance to do this right.”

Harrison’s shuttle service was contracted in December of 2000 to operate the two-bus Panther Express system. H & H Transportation and Eastern mutually agreed in mid-March to terminate the seven-semester shuttle bus contract because H & H could not continue to provide the service at the bidded price.

“I projected all the expenses that would be involved and sent it to an accounting firm who wrote out the bid. They made a mistake and I didn’t catch it,” Harrison said.

Harrison’s company bid an average of $55,177 per semester, which was just over half as much as the only other bid, which averaged $112,843 per semester.

On Wednesday, Eastern agreed to another arrangement in which H & H would supply one bus at the cost of $42 per hour, which amounted to the remainder of the student fee money that pays for the service.

“I have to eat $8,000 out of that deal. That is, in the sense of cost for me to run the one shuttle bus, it will cost be $8,000 more than the university can pay,” Harrison said. “But I’m willing to do that so that I can make this right. I have a new accountant and bookkeeper and I want to try this again.

“I have provided a good service for the kids over the last three years. I even choose to buy brand new buses when I could have bought old ones, but I wanted the students to have the nicer stuff,” Harrison said.

“Not even a Rolex watch ticks right 100 percent of the time,” he said.