{"id":3757,"date":"2013-06-04T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3757"},"modified":"2013-06-02T10:08:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-02T14:08:31","slug":"county-picked-the-highest-bid-from-veolia-for-trash-pickup-lcc-2012-10-09","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/county-picked-the-highest-bid-from-veolia-for-trash-pickup-lcc-2012-10-09.html","title":{"rendered":"County picked the highest bid from Veolia for trash pickup @ LCC 2012-10-09"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe facts don’t match County Chairman Bill Slaughter’s assertion \r\n(according to the VDT Thursday<\/a>):\r\n

\r\nThat decision was made in a good-faith effort to find the lowest\r\npossible rate for garbage service for the citizens of Lowndes County,\r\nhe said Tuesday.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCommissioner Richard Raines moved and\r\n\r\nthe Commission voted to approve 9 October 2012<\/a>\r\nProposal D and awarded it to the lowest bidder for that specific proposal, which was Veolia.\r\nBut that wasn’t the lowest-priced proposal,\r\naccording to the sheet of choices they were using in that meeting:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAll<\/em> of the bidders bid lower on at least one other proposal than\r\nthey did on Proposal D.\r\nADS (which purchased ADS the following month<\/a>)\r\nbid $15.86 on Proposal B and $18.39 on Proposal D.\r\nVeolia itself bid lowest on Proposal F ($8.33), not Proposal D ($13.05).\r\nVeolia also bid lower on Proposal A ($12.74).\r\nBoth Proposal A and Proposal F were non-exclusive, which you can see by\r\n\r\nthe text of the RFP<\/a>.\r\nIn fact, Proposal D had Veolia’s highest<\/em> bid.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNow you wouldn’t have known it at that meeting, at which only the bid sheet was displayed,\r\nand the bid sheet included only prices, but the RFP does repeatedly say:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe Award will not be made solely based on price (See Item No. 14 herein).\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd Proposal D does include some items some of the other proposals do not,\r\nso maybe Commissioner Raines picked it because of some factors in addition to price.\r\nMaybe he picked it because it included recycling, or maybe he picked it because it\r\nincluded a non-exclusive contract. It’s hard to tell from what\r\n\r\nhe said:<\/a>\r\n

\r\nI’m one of those residents that have a card, I pay $100 a year for the card, but I also have curbside. I have a large family. And I end up paying about $30 a month for solid waste. And I’ll let the other commissioners speak for themselves, but for me, option D is the best option. It would represent a significant savings. It’s curbside pickup for everything. Bulky solid waste, residential solid waste, bulky items, recycling, yard waste. I don’t think it could get any easier than to have someone come to the end of your driveway and pick it up. \r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nRaines emphasized price and “for me”.\r\nHe ignored that many of us who had the cards have different situations than his surburban street-dwelling situation,\r\nand his solution is not easier for us than the county’s collection centers.\r\nThe other Commissioners did not speak for themselves.\r\nMaybe if the Commission had held public hearings about waste disposal before deciding,\r\nwe might have heard all their reasons, and we all might have been able to give ours.\r\nBut they didn’t do that.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhy wasn’t there a non-exclusive do-everything Proposal X column?\r\nWhy was the RFP constructed so that the most inclusive features were for an exclusive contract?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nCommissioner Raines did say he was already a customer of Veolia.\r\nIsn’t that a conflict of interest?\r\nWhy did the only Commissioner who said he was a customer of Veolia\r\nmove to award not the lowest bid overall, rather Veolia’s highest bid?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNow Bill Slaughter was not Chairman in October 2012, Ashley Paulk was,\r\nand I don’t even know whether Slaughter was at that meeting.\r\nBut the facts are the opposite of what Chairman Slaughter asserted.\r\nAccording to the county’s own RFP and bid summary table,\r\nthe Commission did not pick the lowest bid overall,\r\nand the lowest bid was for a non-exclusive<\/em> proposal.\r\nOnce again, the Commission chose an exclusive proposal with\r\nthe highest<\/em> bid from Veolia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nHow is this helping\r\n\r\n“the freedoms we enjoy”<\/a>?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The facts don’t match County Chairman Bill Slaughter’s assertion (according to the VDT Thursday): That decision was made in a good-faith effort to find the lowest possible rate for garbage service for the citizens of Lowndes County, he said Tuesday. Commissioner Richard Raines moved and the Commission voted to approve 9 October 2012 Proposal D […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,70,8,2,19,20,88,478,3,479,133],"tags":[1588,619,679,257,258,773,8704,8728,6352,8701,8699,10,8709,8702,8710,91,12,7,8734,6354,4,1601,8772,8773,6,8742,618],"class_list":["post-3757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-ethics","category-georgia","category-government","category-history","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-solid-waste","category-transparency","category-trash","category-vdt","tag-9-october-2012","tag-ads","tag-ashley-paulk","tag-bid","tag-bill-slaughter","tag-deep-south-sanitation","tag-economy","tag-ethics","tag-exclusive","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-history","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lcc","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-non-exclusive","tag-regular-session","tag-rfp","tag-solid-waste","tag-trash","tag-valdosta","tag-vdt","tag-veolia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-YB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3757"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3783,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions\/3783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}