• Not only a garbage engineer but also the city auditor said that the idea that if another company wins the bid for servicing the landfill there will be a large V shaped area that is not used is false.
• Councilman Davis asked the Republic CEO and lawyer if they promise they can beat the negotiated contract and they say they can.
• Republic estimates that Trail Ridge is currently running at a 50% profit margin and that the negotiated contract will end-up being a 40% profit margin with the industry standard being 20% profit margin.
• A councilman (I think it was Joost but don’t quote me on that) asked the Republic representative to get into their profit margins for landfills that they run in other states.
• After being grilled by members of the City Council, the Republic representative said that it seemed like he was going through the bidding process right at the podium and the whole room laughed.
• Councilman Davis then realized that he was making himself appear to be partisan and then apologized to the Republic representatives and tried to say that this is a very important issue and he needs all the facts.
• Councilman Davis suggested that representatives from Republic be put under oath for public comment during the next meeting and asked Republic to pay the city’s legal fees if WM sues the city.
• Our fair city has tried this before and in the case of Mid American Waste systems vs. the city of Jacksonville it was decided by a court of law that the city MUST bid the contract due to state law and does not even have the right to negotiate the contract. The city’s general council disagrees with this and feels that the city does have the right to negotiate.
• The state statute that states that bidding is the rule is statute 287.001
• Waste Management is a very litigious company that has been in and still is in legal battles with the city.
• The current CEO of Republic was working for WM at the time of the signing of the 1991 contract.
• Per the garbage engineer, there is no such thing as air rights over a landfill. The city owns everything.
• All over the country, there are adjoining landfills operated by different companies (apparently due to mergers and divestitures this is somewhat common) and there have been no lawsuits.

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!