Politics & Government

Trash Talking at Tonight's Council Meeting

Trash haulers vying for city contract to present their cases before the council.

Normally, there are five things to know about MB. Today there is one.

Indeed, it should be interesting to see what representatives for each of the three potential Manhattan Beach trash haulers say tonight in their 10-minute presentations to the City Council, which is scheduled to decide which hauler gets the seven-year city contract.

Will they dish dirt, play on residents' emotions, talk about the good things they've done for their communities, focus on the dollars and cents their respective contracts offer or tout their environmental resumes and proposals?

Find out what's happening in Manhattan Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Certainly, they will have to strategically tailor their presentations to what they want the council and the public to hear, particularly since all three haulers will be given the opportunity to present their case instead of following the typical practice of having city staff recommend one hauler and council taking the matter from there.

Regardless, one thing is clear: Council members have an important decision to make in awarding the $23-million-plus contract, and lots of residents and business owners are expected to voice their opinions tonight, albeit in one-minute-per-person time slots.

Find out what's happening in Manhattan Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

On Jan. 24, at a finance subcommittee meeting, city staff recommended Crown Disposal Inc. over Athens Services and Waste Management Inc., which has held the contract for 25 years. Staff then gave that recommendation to the council at its Feb. 1 meeting.

At the Feb. 1 meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Nick Tell said that for the agenda of the Feb. 15 meeting, staff should not give a recommendation for a particular hauler and that the pros and cons should be listed for all three haulers, according to Feb. 1 agenda minutes.

Since then, controversy has grown over the politics behind the contract, especially after the contract wasn't awarded as planned at the Feb. 15 meeting due to staff miscommunication prompted by the last-minute illness of Mayor Richard Montgomery. 

And Tell's idea, at that same meeting, to postpone awarding the contract until after two current council members are out of office appeared illogical, particularly since the two council members, Portia Cohen and Mitch Ward, have had active roles during the two-year period leading up to the hauler selection.

"They've been a substantial part of the process," Councilman Wayne Powell told Patch, saying he thought there was "something fishy going on" when the trash agenda item was postponed on Feb. 15 and the idea of an April date was put forth by Tell. 

He added that minus Montgomery there was the "possibility of a tie vote" and that he felt bad for members of the public who'd made baby-sitting plans and changed schedules to show up to speak at the Feb. 15 meeting and then didn't have the chance to speak.

Montgomery, who originally asked the City Council to renegotiate exclusively with Waste Management, agreed with Patch that the pricing the hauler is offering now is lower than the estimate the firm gave during the first negotiation.

"I can say that we went through a very, very comprehensive bid process and provided the very best rate we could at the time," Vickie Wippel, Waste Management's community relations manager, told Patch.

Wippel said that after their first bid was not accepted, Waste Management "decided to really, really look at our waste services and look at the services we're providing and see how we could improve them in the next contract."

Of the Request for Proposal process the city went with after Waste Management's first bid, Montgomery said, "All the current bidders are in a very close range. We want to keep them all honest. That's what competition is about."

"We want to do what's environmentally sustainable," he said. "We're not going to be penny wise and pound foolish."

Controversy has swirled around Crown's claim to be able to divert 70 percent waste from landfills, however, Therese Kosterman, public relations coordinator for the city of Beverly Hills where Crown  handles all commercial hauling and the city's residential waste materials are processed by Crown, confirmed for Patch on Tuesday that Beverly Hills achieved a 78-percent landfill diversion rate for 2010 as verified by the city's tonnage report. Beverly Hills has 900 active commercial clients and 9,000 residential customers.

Athens and Waste Management proposals list a diversion rate of 55 percent and 57 percent, respectively, with Waste Management's rate growing to 62 percent by contract's end.

Waste Management touts its history of satisfied customers in Manhattan Beach and its community involvement as reasons why they again should be awarded the contract. Wippell told Patch that when the company held its own poll, 86 percent of residents said they wanted to keep Waste Management in spite of the higher cost.

Waste Management has delivered fliers to residents on several occasions during the contract process. The latest one read, "Please help keep Waste Management in Manhattan Beach!" and goes on to state that city staff's recommendation of Crown is based on "a lower bid price and recycling goals that are likely unattainable."

It continues, "In order to continue upgrading our environmentally friendly services and programs, we need to increase our monthly trash fee."

The flier's flip side features a "Dear Valued Customer" letter from a Waste Management driver who writes of the proposed rate increase, "I hope you'll agree that your drivers and the environment are worth that price!"

In his letter, the driver writes, "There are rumors that the Waste Management drivers would switch to either of the new companies the City picks. Let me set the record straight—Waste Management is a great place to work, and I'm proud of everything we do to support the environment. Even though I enjoy working in Manhattan Beach, I won't take a new job with Crown or Athens, and instead hope that my company can find a different route for me in another community."

Tim Fry, whose father, Tom, founded the family-owned and -operated Crown Disposal in 1960, told Patch that the company began recycling in the early 1970s, long before doing so was fashionable or determined to be practical.

Fry, who told Patch that competitors would drive by his dad's operation and laugh at him for his recycling efforts, said that his dad "didn't want to spend money at landfills." To meet that goal, Tom developed a network of facilities that extract as much recyclable material as possible, thereby minimizing what they send to a landfill.

"Because we own all our own facilities, we control our situations and associated costs," said Tim Fry, whose company has proposed the lowest bid when optional services are included. "We're passing on the benefit of being efficient and in control." 

"Landfills are the only facilities we don't own," he added.

"Cities couldn't have picked a better time to bid," said Fry. "Haulers are hungry for the work. Landfills are getting 60 percent of what they were getting when the economy was better and they're now making deals that they're able to pass on to customers."

He said that part of the reason the South Bay is unfamiliar with Crown is because companies like his have to wait for the seven- to 10-year term of an existing contract to be nearly expired before being able to submit a bid.

Fry told Patch that if Crown wins the contract, they will open an office in Manhattan Beach. He also said that all of Crown's live customer service attendants are incentivized on a weekly basis to answer the phone on the first ring. 

"Customer service, it's everything, and it always has been," he said.

Fry also talked about Crown's commitment to its staff, saying that the company has given personnel short-term loans, provided professional guidance or "brought in a lender you trusted," as its staff has, like others, grappled in the economy of the past few years.

Many staffers have been with Crown for 15 to 20 years and the company has not laid anyone off in the last three, economically challenged, years. "We have an impeccable safety record, we provide extensive training, we pay attention and we problem solve," he said. 

"If we see a driver who's uncharacteristically late to work or hits a gate or has some other minor incident, we'll pull them in and ask what's going on. Usually, if they want to answer, it's a problem at home, financial, kids, marriage. We help them get refocused so they can do the best job possible."

Fry talked about Crown's community involvement and said, "We help cities become the cities they want to be. We reinvest in youth and leaders and have a whole laundry list of groups and people we've supported over the years.

"We're not going to come into Manhattan Beach and snub it."

"We've always been low-key about the donations we've made," he said, naming police car donations as probably the firm's largest.

One Manhattan Beach business owner, Mike Keegan of Manhattan Bread & Bagel, is staunchly behind Crown, to the point that he held a Zero Waste Event featuring Crown at his shop on Sunday. 

He wants his business to be the first one in the city to go "zero waste" and told Patch that even though Crown's commercial rates will have him paying more than he does with his current hauler, it will be worth it. 

"We need a hauler who doesn't just talk the talk, but one who walks the walk," he said. "People need to read all the facts and council needs to make the right decision."

As for Athens, Sharon Pearlstein, city engineer for West Hollywood, which Athens services, said, "They've been doing a good job for us. We're satisfied. They're very attentive to our needs." Athens' bid is 2 cents more than Crown's and lower for commercial hauling.

West Hollywood has a population of almost 40,000. Manhattan Beach's population is 33,852, according to the 2000 census.


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