City of San Angelo Staff Defends Awarding Trash Contract to Republic

Below is the entire Trash controversy press conference on video. 

City Operations Director Shane Kelton, who spearheaded City staff’s implementation of the RFP and winner selection process, said that Republic soundly beat Texas Disposal Systems in every area of his staff’s RFP scoring matrix except for commercial trash pickup where the two competitors were tied.

He said that the City’s decision to reveal high level details of the RFP proposals is an unprecedented move for the City.

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Since the coverage of this event is already in video format courtesy of the City, it would be redundant to re-write all of the contents. Here are key takeaways I have from the event yesterday.

1. City Manager Daniel Valenzuela’s strategy is to separate the two large issues of the trash RFP controversy and work both simultaneously until an uncertain date in May when he can deliver the City staff’s findings and recommendations to the Council.
2. At that point, City staff will ask Council to decide the path forward.
3. The two paths are finalizing contract negotiations with Republic and the other is determining if the “Environmental Recovery Fees” attached to every commercial trash pickup invoice since the mid-2000s was a legal charge. There were not concrete estimates on how much an ERF refund to commercial entities would be, or how that would be handled.
4. (Opinion) The scoring of the RFP, and perhaps the way the RFP was written, made it impossible for anyone but Republic to win the trash contract at the landfill. City Operations Director Shane Kelton praised Republic’s generousness to “assume liability for all past, present and future operations of the landfill.” Republic already has past liability of the landfill. And, hypothetically, any legal action by the City against Republic for liability for the landfill in the future will succeed. No company or insurance policy can assume the liability for another company’s management of the landfill.
5. Because the scoring of the RFP was so tilted in Republic’s favor, the selection committee chose to forego in-person presentations.
6. City staff is approaching the controversy of the ERF from a sterile, analytical perspective. They are going to ask Council to make the moral and ethical determination whether or not to proceed with doing business with a company that, if the City research determines the ERF are unauthorized, has been abusing San Angelo businesses by charging unauthorized fees. There are frequent references to “past” and “new” contracts.
7. The female voice on the audio is the KLST reporter. The Standard-Times asked one question. Editor Michael Kelly asked, "wouldn’t it be easier to return that money [ERF refunds] if the City continues to have a contractual relationship…”
8. Valenzuela used the question as an opportunity to reiterate the City’s determination to get to the bottom of the ERF question, and how good the working relationship is between the City and Republic. Citizen Charles “Lynn” Young asked the questions about the 30-day extensions.
9. The City has no automatic month-to-month renewal option with Republic if the contract is not signed by July 31. Kelton said the existing contract has five-year renewal options, but not 30-day options. The unmentioned question (which no one could possibly know) is how much each 30-day monthly charge would be on a month-to-month contract, or if Republic would agree to continue trash pickup on a month-to-month arrangement. The City is backing itself into a corner on negotiations.
10. City staff will not be handing off the two big trash decisions to Council at the upcoming meeting Tuesday.  They expect it will happen sometime in mid- to late-May.