Bid maneuver keeps trash contract in place

 

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

City commissioners walked into Tuesday night’s meeting hoping to save taxpayers money on municipal trash collection. Instead, they voted to spend $14 million more.

Commissioners voted 4-3 to award a $50 million, seven-year contract to Waste Management, which has been the city’s waste disposal provider for the past 15 years. But under the commissioners’ own rules, the bid should have gone to Advanced Disposal Services, which bid $500,000 a year less than Waste Management.

The way commissioners were able to award the contract to the higher of the two bidders was to increase the scope of services, which was one of the options requested by the city in the original Invitation to Bid (ITB). Staff had recommended that the new contract continue the once a week trash, recycling and yard waste schedule put into place last July. Under that scenario, Advanced Disposal was the low bidder, offering $5.4 million a year to Waste Management’s $5.9 million. The city currently pays $6 million a year for trash, recycling and yard waste collection and operates the waste transfer station itself.

But swayed by an outpouring of support from residents and business owners for Waste Management, commissioners decided to increase trash collection to twice a week – recyclables and yard waste will remain at once a week – and add management of the city’s waste transfer station to the contact. Under that scenario, Waste Management was the low bidder by $881,000 in the $50 million contract.

City Commissioner Teri Johnston argued that Waste Management’s annual fee for managing the transfer station was $853,464, an increase of more than $300,000 a year over what the city currently pays to manage the facility itself. That added fee, plus the cost of adding a second weekly trash pick-up, will cost taxpayers $14 million more over the life of the seven-year contract, she said.

“You can’t consider personalities. You can’t consider community service. It’s a straight Invitation to Bid. We have only one factor to evaluate tonight and that’s price,” Johnston told her colleagues on the dais.

Waste Management packed the room with employees and supporters in an effort to hang on to the contact. One Waste Management executive after the other went up to the podium to lobby for their company, saying the bottom line budget numbers didn’t tell the whole story. They touted their firm’s community involvement, saying early morning truck drivers had done everything from rescuing a wandering toddler to breaking up a pit bull attack. Many of the residents who spoke in favor of retaining Waste Management told stories of how regional manager Greg Sullivan was always willing to lend a hand with clean-up after special events.

But Commissioner Johnston repeatedly told her colleagues that the city was bound by law to accept the lowest bid because of the way the contract bids were solicited. Instead of a Request for Proposal, the city issued an Invitation to Bid (ITB). City policy requires commissioners to make their decision on an ITB solely on the bottom line.

“The message we will give is going to be devastating to the city of Key West. When people hear we don’t follow our own guidelines and we’re breaking our own rules, then we’re discouraging the competitive market from coming in,” she said.

But four of her colleagues, commissioners Mark Rossi, Clayton Lopez, Billy Wardlow and Tony Yaniz, disagreed.

“I don’t want to give them a break,” Wardlow said, referring to the large commercial customers whose rates would have gone down approximately 26 percent under the Advanced Disposal bid. “I want to give the residents a break.”

Dozens of those residents, many of whom currently work for Waste Management and were worried about their jobs if a new company took over, came to Tuesday’s meeting to urge commissioners to keep the incumbent in place. One resident, Melissa Kendrick, wondered whether the lower commercial hauling rate for large business customers in the Advanced Disposal bid was subsidizing the higher residential collection rate it offered.

“This thing ain’t broke,” she said. “Who’s trying to fix it and why? Leave us to what we know.”

“Don’t trade one that will for one that might,” said resident Billy Davis, referring to Waste Management’s record of exceptional customer service in Key West. “We’re going from the number one in the country to number eight? And we’re supposed to be thrilled with that,” he asked.

Waste Management is the largest waste collection company in the United States while Advanced Disposal is number eight.

But another resident, Attorney Robert Cintron, urged commissioners to follow their own rules and award the bid to Advanced.

“Waste Management, to its credit, has done a tremendous job tonight to get you to ignore the process you put in place,” he told commissioners. “I urge you to stick with the program you put in place.”

 

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