The Los Alamitos City Council’s “trash-truck” headache is not going away any time soon. In a series of rulings handed down on Friday, July 1, 2011, the honorable Andrew P. Banks allowed the case against the City to proceed, and the City will likely be in court defending its handling of the recent trash hauling contract process.
In October, a citizens group in Los Alamitos sued the City of Los Alamitos and Consolidated Disposal Services. Consolidated (CDS) is a subsidiary of Republic, which was formerly known as Briggemann—Los Al’s trash hauler for decades. The lawsuit claims that the City improperly disqualified bids that should have been qualified, punished companies whose bids were too low, and did not follow the precise scheme for awarding new trash contracts found in the Los Alamitos Municipal Code, in a section enacted in 2008. The result of this, the lawsuit claims, was the awarding of the trash contract to CDS, the second-highest bidder, and not to the “lowest responsible bidder” as required by the Municipal Code.
The lawsuit also alleges that three City Council members worked to subvert the trash contract process and award the contract to CDS as a quid-pro-quo. The petitioners allege that entities and individuals affiliated with Republic and CDS contributed to these City Council Members’ election campaigns, and allegedly funneled money to political groups that helped elect two of them in the 2008 election.
The city, unsurprisingly, wanted the hearing last Friday to resolve the case. They filed demurrers to each cause, which in essence is a way of telling the court: “I’ve read what the other side says, and they haven’t said enough to go forward.” It is a traditional first step on the road of defeating a lawsuit in the early stages. Had all three causes of action lost at this stage, the lawsuit would have disappeared entirely.
It was not to be for the City of Los Alamitos. Judge Banks granted some of the City’s motions, stopping parts of the lawsuit, but left others intact. The most impactful ruling was the judge’s dismissal of the demurrer to the first cause of action, which alleges that the City Council erred in following its statutory procedures for collecting and deciding on solid waste pickup bids.
In his ruling, the Judge found that the City “has not established that the Petition [filed by Citizens for a Fair Trash Contract or CFTC] fails to allege facts showing that City’s award of the trash contract to CDS was arbitrary, capricious, entirely lacking in evidentiary support, or unlawfully or procedurally unfair.” The judge is saying that CFTC has offered enough evidence for the issue to proceed further.
Judge Banks also ruled that CFTC’s second cause of action was duplicitous of their first cause, and he threw it out, a clear victory for the City unless CFTC can amend their claim.
There have been some predictable responses from both sides since the rulings came down (see related articles below). The city’s press release characterizes the lawsuit as “frivolous,” and Mayor Stephens laments “it is a shame the amount of time and resources that has been expended by the City and staff on this lawsuit.” The City also claims victory in Friday’s hearing, musing that “the political gamble to file this lawsuit in order to affect the last election may not be working out as planned.”
The statement continues “what remains now is a single claim against the City regarding the legal interpretation of the key provisions of the City’s municipal code regarding the award of waste franchises.” That is certainly true, but the “single claim” is the primary issue raised by the lawsuit—that the City did not follow its own procedures correctly, thus depriving the citizens of a fair trash contract. That issue is going to go further, probably to trial.
The city also defends its new waste-hauling agreement, claiming that it resulted “in an unprecedented 19% reduction in residential and 6% reduction in commercial waste collection rates. The city also negotiated $275,000 in annual guaranteed general fund revenue and nearly $300,000 in one-time monies. CDS will continue to provide street sweeping services at no additional charge for the duration of the agreement.”
Citizens for a Fair Trash Contract released a statement claiming victory, and expressing vindication over the accusation allegedly made by Council Member Troy Edgar, that the lawsuit “was frivolous, had no merit, and was nothing more than a political ploy made to effect [sic] the November elections.” Though many claims did not survive the City and CDS’s numerous demurrers, the primary force of the lawsuit can continue, and will do so at the next court date, scheduled for September 16.
There may be another side to the city’s claims that the new agreement will save money annually and add to the city’s coffers. “Regardless of how good the deal is in comparison to the bad deal they had before, that doesn’t mean that this CDS bid was the best deal that they could have gotten,” Benjamin Pugh, attorney for CFTC tells OC180 news. “The winning bid was 6.5 million dollars more over 10 years than the lowest responsible bidder, Athens, which represents a 30% increase in price to the citizen.”
And that lowest responsible bidder, Athens Services? They just received an exclusive contract for hauling in Redondo Beach, beating out CDS and others. “It’s not like they can’t haul trash” says Pugh.
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