Logo
Fuel
ISSUE #34.18 • NEWS • NEWS STORY
[CITY HALL]

A Trashy Story


Did the city throw away taxpayer money on a new garbage contract?

Social bookmarking | Permalink
Email | Print | Rate It! | 1 comment
Recently in "News"

August 27th, 2008
Letters to the Editor • Inbox1 comment

August 27th, 2008
The Score • Taking Your Share and Then Some0 comments

August 27th, 2008
The Party Is in the Lobby | Oregon Democrats descend on Denver looking for change they can believe in—with help from corporate friends.3 comments

August 27th, 2008
Bar Fight | The restaurant lobby butts heads with Portland neighborhoods.0 comments

August 27th, 2008
Skipper’s Castaways | New county sheriff keeps the crew from Giusto’s three-hour tour.0 comments

August 27th, 2008
Murmurs • Hope. Change. Capitalism. Barbed Wire.

0 comments

August 27th, 2008
Rogue of the Week • Sue Castner | Serious Party Foul.16 comments

August 27th, 2008
Life and Death in Washington | Call it “death with dignity” or “assisted suicide,” Washington preps for Initiative 1000 — with Oregon’s help. 2 comments

August 27th, 2008
Incorrect Change | A new coin buys anger instead of bus fare.5 comments

August 27th, 2008
Cover Story • Sometimes a Great Lawsuit | Ken Kesey’s last prank pits his widow in a court battle with his best friend and a Playboy model.2 comments


BY NIGEL JAQUISS | njaquiss at wweek dot com

[March 12th, 2008]

The expression “garbage in, garbage out,” has seldom appeared more true than with the City of Portland’s recent attempt to streamline its contracts with trash haulers.

Rather than achieving a lower-priced contract, the city ignored the largest locally owned hauler and ended up paying about twice what Metro paid in a similar circumstance.

The story dates back to October when Jim Van Nest, a contracts coordinator with the city’s Bureau of Purchasing, notified 500 companies that the bureau was seeking bids on a three-year contract to pick up trash at 130 city-owned locations, including parks, City Hall and police stations.

Previously, city bureaus such as parks, police and fire each negotiated their own arrangements with haulers. That practice generated a crazy quilt of contracts, so consolidating all pick-ups under one contract made sense.

Except the Bureau of Purchasing neglected to contact the city’s second-largest garbage hauler, locally owned AGG Enterprises, when it contacted bidders.

George Simons, who along with his wife owns Swan Island-based AGG, says he’s been hauling city trash for more than 20 years and was shocked and angered to be left off the bidder list.

City officials’ explanation has done little to mollify Simons. Bruce Walker, the city’s director of solid waste, says he gave the Purchasing Bureau a list that included AGG.

But Van Nest says AGG never registered to be on the city’s electronic list of bidders and therefore didn’t get notified of the contract opportunity.

Van Nest says he called the company Oct. 11 to make sure it wasn’t interested after AGG didn’t submit a bid. He says he spoke to a woman—whose name he says he did not get—and she confirmed AGG had no interest.

Simons says that’s nonsense. “Everybody who works here knows I make the decisions on whether we bid a job,” he says. “If he talked to somebody, how come he didn’t get a name?”

Van Nest says the city got three bids and in January awarded the contract—worth about $1 million annually—to another local hauler, Trashco.














icon Story continues below

advertisement
OMSI
advertisement

The city’s award notification gave any registered bidder the opportunity to protest the award within the next seven days. But because Simons didn’t know about the original bid or the award, he didn’t protest. It was not until late January when a city representative asked AGG to remove its drop boxes and other equipment from city parks that AGG learned there had even been a bid.

Simons blew up. “I told [Bureau of Purchasing Director Jeff] Baer, ‘We’ll sue you if you don’t rebid the contract,’” Simons says. “In our business a $1 million contract is a huge contract, and after all the years of doing business with the city, we’re just looking for a fair shake.”

Baer declined to reopen the bidding.

In the meantime, AGG bid another local government contract that Simons says is similar to the city’s contract. In that contract, AGG won Metro’s business last month by offering a haul fee of $52 per drop box. The haul fee is the primary variable in garbage contracts, Simons explains.

Trashco’s winning bid on the city contract included a haul fee of $118 for each drop box, more than twice what Metro is paying AGG.

“Trashco is a good company,” Simons says. “But we would have bid a lot less. The city is paying too much.”

Van Nest says Purchasing has had success combining other contracts such as computers and office supplies. He is unfamiliar with the Metro contract and says price was only 30 percent of the criteria for the city contract.

“I’m not sure it would be an apples to apples comparison,” he says of the Metro contract. “Our contract has a heavy sustainability component with lots of reporting and waste reduction.”

Simons, who says his company’s sustainability credentials are second to none, is still considering legal action. “If this is how the city does business, I guess they’ve got more money than we thought,” he says.

Rate This Story
3.75 average/4 votes

 
read all 1 comments | add your comment
 

RECENT COMMENTS ON “A Trashy Story”

1

This is just another example of how our tax dollars are (inefficiently) spent by a bloated government that doesn't gets paid too much and doesn't have a business sense!

CF, Mar 20th, 2008 11:51am
 
 
 





Recently in Willamette Week
August 28th 2008Sometimes a Great Lawsuit | Ken Kesey’s last prank pits his widow in a court battle with his best friend and a Playboy model.
August 28th 2008Sliced Bread, Beware | A better fire hose, a poker aid & a foldable clipboard—meet six Portland inventors whose big ideas are the best thing since, well, you know.
August 28th 2008How to Live Cheap in Portland | Throwing too much money away on food and shelter? here’s WW’s Recession Survival Guide.
August 28th 2008The Queer and the Qur’an | Ali is gay. And Muslim. Can he be both?
August 28th 2008Good Cop, Mad Cop | Many of Navin Sharma’s colleagues in the Vancouver Police Department can’t believe he got fired. After reading this, neither will you.
August 28th 2008Lean, Mean Meat-Free Machine | Portlander Robert Cheeke is the face of vegan bodybuilding.
August 28th 2008The Sopranokovs | The Russian mob comes to town with a new scam—medical identity theft.
August 28th 2008Manhunter | Almost every state lets bounty hunters chase down its most wanted. Why doesn’t Oregon?
August 28th 2008Get Wet: WW’s Summer Guide 2008 | The rain is finally over. Now let’s get wet!