One might expect city staff to go through key contract provisions with Trashaway-Republic Services and assess their performance over the last ten years. It's clear that didn't happen with at least two sections of the contract, commercial client billing and submission of customer complaints to the city. This means City Council had only part of the picture when it acted on April Fool's:
On April 1, the council unanimously approved the recommendation of a committee to grant, pending negotiations, the city’s waste collection contract to Republic Services for 10 years.City staff abdicated their responsibility to ensure commercial clients were charged allowable fees and not a penny more. They also failed to compel Trashaway-Republic to provide the contractually required listing of customer complaints for the last five years.
These omissions blow a hole in staff's assertion they conducted a thorough analysis. Assessing contract compliance for the current provider would be a key step in any credible evaluation process.
I appreciate the call for transparency, but it's darned embarrassing when the light of day reveals the city is clueless, unaware. Republic is in the midst of a charm offensive as it tries to survive its first serious challenge in thirty five years.
This item was due to return to City Council May 6th. There's no hide nor hair of it yet.
Update 6-15-14: Target date for this to go to Council is July 1.
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