Why did the Lowndes County Commission make

this exclusive franchise
with a Florida or Alabama or New York company


and then

sue a local Lowndes County company after

the VDT reported the previous spring that any contract
would be non-exclusive and wouldn’t put anybody out of business?

Here, obtained by LAKE through an open records request,
is the

contract with ADS of Middle Georgia, LLC.
The

the agenda item for the 11 December 2012 Commission meeting at which
this contract was approved
says ADS of Central Alabama, Inc.

The contract says ADS is “a Florida corporation”,
and we know ADS is owned by

Highstar Capital of New York City.


Once again,

why is granting a cheap monopoly to an out-of-state company
more important than either letting local companies compete for the service
or having the county continue to provide a public service directly to
its taxpayers and citizens?

The termination clause

I pointed out to the Commission
after
an ADS executive made excuses for nonperformance
is

Paragraph 18 of the contract:

The current Commission does not have to continue to

eat its own.
It can change the path the previous Commission of last year set.
It can choose not to sue Deep South Sanitation.
It can choose to modify the contract with ADS.
It can even terminate the contract with ADS.
If it wants to.

-jsq