The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to change our trash company from Waste Management to CR&R. There’s good news and bad news.
THE GOOD NEWS
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The good news is that we are going to get shiny new trash bins, and for most residential customers, our monthly rate for trash collection will go down enough that at the end of a year we’ll be able to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks to celebrate our good fortune.
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THE BAD NEWS
The bad news is that there will be significantly more trash trucks on our streets and for owners of commercial property and people who live in multi-family units (mobile homes, apartments and condos), rates are going to go up by as much as 100%. Here are some examples for multi-family residents –
Forest Glen Apartments – up 27%
Serrano Highlands Apartments – up 58%
Cedar Glen HOA – up 68%
Pheasant Creek HOA – up 104%
Nearly 200 small business owners in Lake Forest will have their rates increased by 47%. For larger commercial accounts, increases will be less. If they cooperate with the new state mandated recycling procedures, their increases are estimated to be less than 20%. If they don’t cooperate, the increases may go as high as 30%.
What does this mean in real money? Right now the current annual cost for trash collection is $5.9 million. With the new rates under CR&R the cost will jump to $7.4 million, an increase across the boards of more than 25%.
And make no mistake, the costs for increased trash collection will be passed on to everyone who uses these businesses.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
The rate increases are the inevitable result of the state mandated law to increase the amount of trash that is recycled. But if an increase was inevitably in our future, did the increase have to be as big as it is going to be? That was the purpose of the City’s nearly year-long pursuit of a new waste management contract. The end result was that only two companies eventually responded to the City’s RFP, and of these two companies, the City chose the one company that had the higher rates.
Why did only two companies reply to the RFP, thus severely limiting our choices? And why did the Council select the one company that had the highest rates?
WHY ONLY TWO?
Waste management is a lucrative business. Not only does the trash carrier charge us for picking up the trash, with effective recycling programs they charge others for the recycled material which is then used by third party manufacturers. And it’s a growing business. Life gets trashier by the day.
When a city puts out an RFP asking for proposals from waste management companies, there are usually a half dozen companies that apply. Indeed, there are nearly a dozen companies that operate in Southern California, including such familiar names as Waste Management, Republic, Rainbow, CR&R, and Ware. Why did only 2 companies apply to service Lake Forest?
At the City Council meeting, two Council members asked this question, but only in a rhetorical way. But it’s a major question and sits at the heart of our problem, because by only getting 2 companies who bid to work for us, we severely limited our choices.
From my POV the bottom line is that the RFP developed by the City with the help of a consultant company was so deeply flawed that none of the other possible competing companies bothered to apply. I spent more than 8 pages summarizing the flaws in this RFP - it’s available if you want a copy – e-mail me at DrJGardner@gmail.com. I even discussed it with an expert in the waste management field, who confirmed my worse suspicions.
The problems with the RFP not only may have caused the lack of competitive bids, it may also have played a role in the actual selection. More about that in our next article.
And isn't it interesting that the only two companies that bid for the contract had "greased the skids" well in advance by giving thousands of dollars to Council members Voigts, Robinson, and McCullough as "campaign contributions". Have companies learned that to get a contract in Lake Forest means keeping the Council members' election committees financially healthy? Did this deter companies from even bothering to apply?
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Please Note: Our final article on "Gettin' Satisfaction in Lake Forest" will appear next week to make room for the 3-part series on "Talkin' Trash"
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