Republic Services will be the city of Sammamish’s sole solid waste provider in 2017.
At the Tuesday regular meeting, the Sammamish City Council unanimously awarded Republic Services the upcoming nine-year contract, which staff say will save most residents between $1.04 and $9.87 each month.
The council was scheduled to award the contract before the new year, but a temporary restraining order delayed council action. A King County Superior Court judge quashed that restraining order Dec. 22, freeing the council to award the contract Tuesday.
A good thing, too, as the service provider would need at least one year to prepare for the 2017-2025 contract, according to the city.
Waste Management, which filed the restraining order Dec. 1, altered city forms to calculate its service prices, which dismisses its bid as “non-responsive,” per the city’s request for bids instructions sent out last year.
“One guy followed the rules; one guy did not,” Councilmember Tom Odell said at the Tuesday meeting.
More than that, the alteration does not allow for an “apples-to-apples” comparison of the two submitted bids, said Beth Goldberg, director of administrative services.
Waste Management adamantly claims it would save Sammamish residents millions during the nine-year contract. City staff say there’s no way to prove this given the varying ways to calculate costs. Republic Services bid might be lower as well, using Waste Management’s methodology, Goldberg said.
After a staff analysis, using the city’s original methodology, staff concluded Waste Management had underrepresented its bid price more than $180,000. (A similar review showed Republic had a $10 math error, which staff also corrected.) This correction brought Waste Management’s bid up to $723,848 and Republic Services’ bid to $714,675.
“Even if we had deemed the bid responsive they would have not been the lowest bid,” Goldberg said.
Additionally, Waste Management had sent the city six contact modifications to its bid, which is permitted under the request for bids instructions. However, staff say the service provider never explained the cost ramifications to those revisions.
“There are two things at play with these contract moderations,” Goldberg said. “First, they degrade the level of service that we want to offer …. Secondly, we do believe there are cost ramifications, although we are not able to quantify them because Waste Management did not supply that information.”
Some of the added language Waste Management proposed would eliminate crediting the customer for missed pickups; it would not ensure next-day pickup for missed collections; and it would extend the length of time (up to seven days) for the hauler to respond to a missed pickup, according to Goldberg’s presentation.
“You can’t quantify those changes,” freshly elected Mayor Don Gerend said. “That makes it difficult.”
The council deliberated after a 45-minute executive session regarding the litigation and Goldberg’s staff presentation.
Ultimately, the seven-member council agreed with Goldberg’s assessment and awarded the contract to Republic.
The 2017-2025 solid waste contract will unify the city of Sammamish with one service provider. Currently, Republic Services caters to the southern portion of the Plateau and Waste Management serves the northern areas.
