City may keep once-a-week trash pickup
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
Some of the formally stalwart supporters of Key West’s new twice-a-week trash collection contract with Waste Management changed gears at their Tuesday, Aug. 5, meeting.
The controversial seven-year, $53 million contract caused an upheaval in city government in May when a majority of city commissioners sided with incumbent Waste Management against staff recommendations. Utilities department staff had recommended that the challenging bidder, Advanced Disposal Services, be awarded the contract because it offered a lower bid to continue the once a week trash collection schedule that has been in place in Key West since last summer and is credited with helping triple the city’s recycling rate. Advanced Disposal was the low bidder on commercial trash hauling rates, as well.
Commissioners voted 4-3 to keep Waste Management in place. To do that and still pick the low bidder, however, they had to select the most expensive of four options requested by city staff: Increasing residential pickup to twice a week and turning management of the city’s transfer station over to Waste Management. Two members of the city Sustainability Advisory Committee resigned in protest of the twice-weekly collection schedule, saying it would hurt efforts to increase recycling rates in the city. And Utilities Director Jay Gewin resigned the day after the contract vote, although he said he was leaving to be closer to his family in Seattle, Wash.
In an about-face at the Aug. 5 City Commission meeting where a vote was scheduled to approve a new trash collection rate for property owners, Commissioner Clayton Lopez said he was now uncomfortable with the twice a week collection schedule. He asked City Attorney Shawn Smith whether it was too late to amend the contract, which was formally signed by the city and Waste Management on July 25.
“I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. Even though I am convinced we chose the right company, the one thing I am still concerned about is I’m not so sure returning to twice a week pickup is the way to go,” Lopez said.
Smith said that while it may be legally possible to amend the contract, he recommended that commissioners go ahead with the scheduled vote approving the new twice-a-week collection schedule – and the accompanying $37 a year rate boost for residential property owners – in order to meet a deadline for including the higher rate on upcoming tax bills. A public hearing will be held on the new collection rate on Sept. 3.
“You do have an executed contract with a vendor that specified the two pickups. Now, that could be modified with a willing participant on the other side,” Smith said.
Greg Sullivan, Waste Management regional director, was in the audience and was asked by Commissioner Tony Yaniz whether his company would consider renegotiating the new contract.
“Absolutely. We work for you,” Sullivan said. “Shawn [Smith] has the expertise as the attorney and he can guide us through the legal channels.”
In addition to Lopez, Commissioner Jimmy Weekley – who voted for the Waste Management contract in May but who was also concerned at that time about increasing collection to twice a week – said he would support a move back to once a week. Along with Commissioner Teri Johnston, who has spearheaded the protest against the new contract that raises trash collection costs by $14 million over the life of the seven year contract, and Mayor Craig Cates, the needed four votes to change the contract apparently are in hand.
Waste Management has been the city’s trash hauler since 1999.
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Talk about inmates in charge of the asylum.
FIRST: we were paying for and receiving 2 weekly pickups,
NEXT; we were cut to 1 weekly pickup but had to pay the same rate, and it was now tacked on to our property taxes.
NEXT: we give WM (the high bidder) an extra $14 million to go back to 2 weekly pickups
FINALLY: we want to cut the extra pickup and go back to 1, but keep the inflated rates.
As a taxpayer, watching these compounded screw ups, that cost me more and more for less and less, i become convinced that electoral candidates must be spawning in the shallow end of the gene pool.
Why we vote idiots into office who so flagrantly pick our pockets makes me doubt the sanity of our species.
Perhaps it is as Samuel Clemens wrote as Mark Twain: When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained.