City Council decides not to dump Waste Management

By Staff
August 14, 2004
By Steve Gillespie/staff writer
Meridian will keep Waste Management Inc. as its residential garbage collector for at least another three years.
The Meridian City Council sidestepped recommendations from Mayor John Robert Smith, a city select committee and a consulting firm on Friday and voted 4-1 at the end of a three-hour special meeting to stay with the company it has used to collect residents' and business' waste since 1993.
Ward 1 Councilman George Thomas was the only councilmen who voted against Waste Management.
The vote came two months after councilmen put Waste Management on a 90-day notice of termination and hired a consulting firm to help in negotiating a better contract and attract new companies to bid.
In the end, councilmen were able to negotiate a better contract with Waste Management, but voted against recommendations to hire Inland Services of Laguna Vista, Texas.
Inland was the only other firm to bid, producing a low bid of $1,675,500 a year.
Butch Lambert, owner of Lambert and Associates, the consulting firm hired by the city to help negotiate the contracts, said Waste Management's yearly bid was $1,867,500, representing a difference of $192,000.
But during Friday's meeting, city officials and company representatives named other figures, ranging from $14,000 to $142,000 as the difference in cost between the two companies.
Thomas served on a committee that reviewed the two offers, along with Lambert, Ward 4 Councilman Jesse E. Palmer Sr., Public Works Director Monty Jackson, Odell Hopkins, who is in charge of the city's solid waste contract, and Wallace Heggie, the city's purchasing agent.
The committee voted 5-1 to switch garbage collection over to Inland. Palmer cast the lone dissenting vote.
Ward 2 Councilman Mary Perry said she voted to stay with Waste Management because of potential litigation the city might face from Waste Management over a contract to use its landfill if the city went with another company. And because she said some select committee members said there had been a reduction in the number of complaints the city has received lately about Waste Management.
Ward 3 Councilman Barbara Henson said she voted to keep Waste Management because the company promised to pick up all garbage that was not hazardous waste.
Terry B. Schweitzer, site manager for Waste Management in Meridian, said he was pleased with the council's decision.