Waste Management comes out on top
in county garbage collection fee row
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
A dispute between the county and Waste Management, Inc. of Florida, over the cost of hauling Keys garbage has been settled, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for thousands of dollars.
At its May 20 meeting, the Board of County Commissioners narrowly voted to agree to pay the company a higher rate than had been agreed upon in a signed contract, which Waste Management claims is tainted by an error made by county staffers.
In addition, the amended contract contains loophole language on the subject of recycling wide enough to drive a garbage truck through: The company says it will make a “reasonable commercial effort” rather than “guarantee”, to comply with Florida’s 75 percent recycling rate mandate by the end of the decade.
The initial dispute centered on the per-ton price Waste Management charges the county to collect and remove about 85,000 tons of trash annually.
The contract between the firm and the county contained a figure of $84.50, but after it came into effect, Waste Management claimed the number should actually be $87.15.
The company says the discrepancy is part of a clerical mistake stemming from multiple drafts of a 10-year deal being passed back and forth between the two parties as a new contract was being finalized, nearly two years ahead of schedule, back on May 21 of 2014.
Waste Management’s point man in the Keys, Greg Sullivan, claims that a monthly Consumer Price Index payment should have kicked in as of last October.
“It was an honest error,” Sullivan said last month. “We’ve been here a long time, and want to fix this minor error and move on.”
District 5 Commissioner Sylvia Murphy, who voted with colleagues David Rice, of District 4, and George Neugent, of District 2 to amend the original contract, was pleased with the vote’s outcome.
“I think it’s pretty neat,” Murphy said later. “I just hope the person doing the negotiating next time takes some of this into the negotiations. We’ll learn from our mistakes.”
County Manager Roman Gastesi agreed with Mayor Danny Kolhage, of District 1, and Mayor Pro-Tem Heather Carruthers, of District 3, who voted to oppose the amendment.
“I guess we live in a democracy, and the majority of the bosses wanted to [change the contract] so that’s what we’re going to do,” Gastesi said. “We had a good, signed contract, but a vote is a vote.”
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And yet another point that raises the ‘why didn’t the city officials go with the low bidder’ question?
What did Waste Mis-Management give under the table or behind the curtain to get the deal? The ramped up the contract earning an extra $14milion for half as many pickups, plus, they won’t recycle the environmentally dangerous plastic bags “because their equipment can’t deal with them.”
An extra $14million for half the work is a pretty good opportunity to upgrade their equipment, it would seem.
Not at all impressed.