The Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, Inc. (CTDC) and a group of individual citizens announced today that they have filed new counts in their ongoing lawsuit challenging the right of the Jacksonville government to enter into a 19 to 25 year, multi-hundred million dollar, no-bid contract extension with Waste Management to operate the City’s Trail Ridge landfill and future waste disposal technology.

Specifically, they have amended the complaint filed last year against the City of Jacksonville and the City Council to request that the Court declare the passage of Ordinance 2010-217 to be both illegal and void. The several grounds asserted include multiple City and Council violations of Florida’s open government meeting (“Sunshine”) law.

The lawsuit further seeks to protect the public interest by asking the Court to force the City to correct violations of the public records law, which require government and officials to make records available to every citizen for review and copying. The City has failed to create and provide minutes of a public meeting (related to Trail Ridge), and refused to make a Council member’s records of the official business use of his cell phone available to the public.

A press conference will be held at 12:00 noon on Thursday, June 3, 2010, in front of the Jacksonville City Hall, 117 West Duval Street, Jacksonville, Florida, by Victor Wilhelm, President of the CTDC, and John Winkler, lead attorney for the Plaintiffs.

The Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, Inc. is a not for profit corporation and nonpartisan political committee dedicated to serving the community as a watchdog group, using public information to oppose corruption, waste, and “Sunshine Law” violations in government. Additional information is available from the author of this press release, immediate past president John Winkler, who can be reached at 904-384-9918.
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We have reached round two of the dogfight between the city of Jacksonville and Waste Management.  The Jacksonville City Council held a committee-as-a-whole meeting on April 19th and narrowly voted down the proposed settlement of the Waste Management lawsuit against the city of Jacksonville by a vote of 9-8. We are not completely out of the woods yet. This vote has to be confirmed by the full City Council on April 27th. A change of heart by a member of the City Council and the April 19th vote could be reversed.

Here are some interesting news items concerning the landfill contract controversy. Clay County is doing what Jacksonville should do – bidding the landfill contract!  I guess that Waste Management did not have previous contracts with Clay County government that it could twist to its advantage and keep its competitors at bay.

The Florida Times Union editorial board complained that the committee-as-a-whole meeting mentioned above did not provide adequate time for discussion concerning the proposed settlement. We could hardly disagree with the Florida Times Union’s assertion that a contract worth more than $400 million over 26 years merits more than two hours of discussion. Let’s hope that Council President Richard Clark listens to this wise advice.

Finally, Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County (CTDC) President Victor Wilhelm had a letter to the editor concerning the landfill contract controversy published in the Florida Times Union. The CTDC has never wavered from its initial position that the contract must be bid and Wilhelm’s letter reflects this position.

What can you do? Let your City Councilperson know that competitive bidding of this contract not only makes good economic sense but assures an open and transparent process free of corruption.

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Due to court ordered mediation, a proposed new deal between Waste Management Inc. and the city of Jacksonville provides Mayor Peyton another opportunity to settle the dispute over the Trail Ridge landfill. The legislation implementing this tentative agreement has been introduced as City Council bill 2010-0217. The Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County continues to oppose any agreement between the two parties that circumvents competitive bidding and there is nothing in this new agreement that indicates that the Mayor’s Office is any more committed to competitively bidding the garbage landfill contract than it was when its first negotiated agreement with Waste Management was rejected by Jacksonville City Council.

See below past President John Winkler’s commentary on the landfill question.

It doesn’t take knowledge of rocket science to operate a landfill. Whatever Waste Management (WM), Republic/Southland, or anyone else in the garbage disposal industry may want the people of Jacksonville and their City Council to believe, spreading out household trash and covering it with dirt really is something that anyone able to operate a dump truck and bulldozer can do. While it may or may not be the kind of civic duty Jacksonville cares to perform using its own employees, there is nothing so special about the creation of a thousand-layer trash pile that it can only be done by giving exclusive rights to do so to one outfit, without competitive bidding, for the next thirty-five years.

Wait, you say, is this a rerun column? The whole “bid the landfill” vs. “Waste Management Forever” debate was fought out last year, you remember, and won by the forces of light when City Council rejected the Mayor’s no-bid, 35 year, $750 million contract extension on running the Trail Ridge dump, right? Didn’t the City then leap at the chance to litigate with Waste Management if need be in order to establish our right to either build our own trash mound or have the low bidder do it? Yes, that happened, but suddenly there’s a new deal proposed by the Jacksonville General Counsel that is a whole lot like the Mayor’s old deal. Call it landfill redux, deja vu all over again, or lipstick on a pig – no matter how you slice the new proposed landfill contract, it’s still (at best) last year’s baloney. Unlike last year, however, there is no time for a deliberative process at City Council. The new proposed contract (Ordinance 2010-217) demands City Council accept it by April 30, 2010, as presented, with no changes allowed.

When a group of us at the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County (www.jaxtaxpayers.org) sued the City last year to get a ruling that Jacksonville had to either bid out a contract this huge or do the work themselves, we pointed out several legal problems in the Mayor’s tentative agreement. One provision of that proposal (still available for review at www.coj.net under Ordinance 2008-538) was an illegal clause which could have, under certain circumstances, forced the sale of the entire thousand acre Trail Ridge landfill site, and an adjacent “borrow pit” (dirt mine) site, from the City to Waste Management without any competition. Another illegal aspect of the earlier version of the no-bid contract under state law was that it could have gone on for an indefinite period of years, since it defined WM’s right to spread garbage in terms of tons (42 million) rather than time. Interestingly, the proposed contract now thrown in front of City Council avoids these two problems by leaving out the bargain land sale provision and defining a maximum number of years that Waste Management will have the exclusive right to run the City’s landfill(s). The new proposal essentially allows no more than ten years as the period WM would have been running the existing landfill before it would have been full, another 19 years for WM to operate any expansions or new landfill, with another possible six year extension “upon mutual agreement.” Not, in my opinion, coincidentally, this potentially 35 year agreement is the same length of time as the estimates on how long the Mayor’s earlier proposal would have run.
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We have another “emergency” bill probably coming up for a vote at the Jacksonville City Council meeting this Tuesday. The bill is 2009-467 and its purpose is to appropriate $168,078 for the installation of a new batting cage and picnic pavilion at Wingate Park in Jacksonville Beach.  Apparently, the “emergency” is that the contractor specified in the bill (Jaguar Builders of Jax, Inc.) is working at a location close to the park.  On account of this lucky break, the contractor avoids the competitive bidding process and the usual construction bond requirement. It would be very unfortunate that after the City Council made the right decision by rejecting the no bid Trail Ridge contract that they would so quickly abandon the competitive bidding process on such flimsy grounds. The bill is sponsored by the incoming City Council President Richard Clark. Hopefully, this is not a sign of the City Council’s future under his leadership.

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PRESS RELEASE
From: Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, Inc.
John Winkler, President and legal counsel
(904) 384-9918 www.jaxtaxpayers.org
April 26, 2009 Jacksonville, Florida

The legality of Mayor Peyton’s efforts to give Waste Management a $750 million City contract without competitive bids was challenged in a lawsuit by a local citizen’s group late Friday. The Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, on behalf of all local residents, are requesting a court ruling on whether the Mayor’s proposal for the Trail Ridge landfill can even legally be considered by City Council. John Winkler, President of the CTDC, said his group is unaffiliated with any potential landfill operator. “Our sole purpose is to insure that the City follows the spirit and letter of its own laws on giving out large contracts, ” said Winkler. “City Council must determine both who will run the landfill and how much it will cost the residents for the next thirty years or more. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are at stake, and the process has to be transparent, fair, and free of corporate intimidation of either the public or public officials.”

Winkler explains that the suit asks the court to declare that a vote by City Council to waive the city competitive bidding rules is illegal, as would be entering into the restated contract on Trail Ridge. The CTDC maintains the Mayor’s request to City Council violates local law because the overriding public purpose of the Procurement Code and the contracts it covers make it clear that landfill operations must be bid. The proposed “restated” contract is also unlawful because it contains provisions which could force the City to sell the entire 977 acre Trail Ridge site, together with the newly-purchased City “dirt mine,” to Waste Management without following the City ordinance on land sales.

“The citizens must guarantee City Council is not intimidated by Waste Management’s threats of litigation, amplified by the Mayor, into approving execution of an illegal ‘no-bid’ contract on the landfill,” Winkler reiterated. “Moreover, even a legal contract that could force the City into selling its only landfill site to a private company is irresponsible. The people of Duval County are unwilling to take that risk.”

See filed court documents below.

Complaint For Declaratory And Supplemental Relief

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2 Part 1

Exhibit 2 Part 2

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 4

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Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County board member Phil Laibe made the following comments about the April 9th City Council hearing on the proposed Trail Ridge contract.  His comments are his own and do not reflect the opinions of Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County.

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Waste Management, Inc. has recently fired its latest salvo over the proposed $750 million Trail Ridge landfill contract by placing an advertisement in Sunday’s Florida Times Union newspaper. It promises the taxpayers of Duval County a cost savings of $250 million over the current contract if they allow Waste Management to continue to run the landfill site. It makes other promises such as recycling, efficient solid waste disposal technology and no closure and post closure expenses for the city. Finally, it emphasizes what a great partnership the city of Jacksonville has had with Waste Management. Wow, this sounds so good that it gets one thinking that the landfill contract does not need to be competitively bidded after all!

Not so fast. It is like marrying the first girl you fall in love with. Sure, it could turn out great, but why not shop around before you take the plunge? In medical science, scientists run clinical trials to verify if a drug really can cure the disease that it claims to cure. So the drug company says that the drug reduces the symptoms of the disease by 50%. Should we immediately start using the drug? Not exactly. You first ask if there was a control group. This control group has the same disease and is similar to the group receiving the drug, but does not get the drug. If the control group also sees a reduction in the symptoms of the disease of 50%, then we know that the drug is no more effective than letting the disease takes its natural course.

What does this have to do with the proposed landfill contract? When you bid the contract, each company submitting a bid is a control group for other bidders. Sure, $250 million sounds great. But could it be matched by other waste management companies? We will never know until we bid the contract.

Also, in the advertisement, Waste Management would seem to be our friend by taking us aside and asking us if this really is a good time to risk litigation costs and permitting delays. You would think that Waste Management is doing us a favor by helping us to avoid all of those headaches. What a pal!

I guess that this is the part that perturbs me the most. Waste Management is using the carrot and stick approach. Sweeten the pot with the carrot of $250 million of cost savings, but swing around the stick of litigation at the same time. Both the city and Waste Management are pursuing risk adverse courses. Waste Management avoids litigation that they are likely to lose according to Florida Coastal School of Law professor Cleveland Ferguson and the city’s General Counsel and also avoids the possibility of losing the contract through competitive bidding. The city avoids the cost of litigation and the possibility of running out of landfill space due to possible injunctions against bidding the landfill to any other company while the litigation is taking place.

The big loser in all of this is the competitive bidding process. The bidding process not only protects the taxpayer by assuring that city services are provided in the most cost efficient manner possible. But it also ensures that government contracts are not awarded to companies that have the best connections within city government. Using fair and transparent competitive bidding avoids government corruption and ensures fairness in the awarding of government contracts. Bid the contract!

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