Canton officials are revisiting a waste-hauling service contract approved at the Canton City Council meeting last month.
Ward III Councilman John Beresford, who opposed the contract extension approval with Waste Management in February, brought up the issue under old business on the agenda at the March 4 city council meeting.
The Waste Management contract discussion was not listed on the agenda.
“We’re trying to streamline the agenda. Old business gives us an opportunity to bring anything up,” Beresford said. “I probably should have said, ‘I want this on here.’”
He said, at the meeting, the city needed to go out for bids, but he did not cite why the city council was revisiting a contract that already had been approved.
On March 5, Beresford said the Feb. 18 approval of the $2.1 million, 30-month contract extension with Waste Management, was “null and void,” because the existing contract only allowed for a 24-month extension. “They changed the contract to 30 months, therefore it was not an extension of a two-year contract,” Beresford said.
Ward I Councilwoman Pat Tanner, chairwoman of the Sewer, Sanitation and Stormwater Committee, made the motion Feb. 18 to approve the contract extension. She said if it was the will of the council to revisit that, they could.
“The status, as far as I am concerned, is the majority of this council voted last month to give a directive to Waste Management and to our city attorney to draw up a revised contract, which speaks to the recommendations that were made by the majority of this council at that time,” Tanner said at the March 4 meeting. “It was not my understanding that this was going to be on the agenda for tonight. I had conferred with council and contacted Mr. (Scott) Wood and asked that he put it on the agenda for next (meeting) in order for us to take action on the contract for acceptance or denial as the majority of council saw fit.”
City Attorney Bobby Dyer said the contract was “not null and void,” but the Feb. 18 vote was not the final action, because the city council did not have a drafted contract in front of them at the time of the vote.
He said an amendment to extend the contract for 30 months at the current pricing would have to be added to the current contract.
“It happens with contracts all the time, but you have to have a vote to get it started,” Dyer said.
Following city council discussion on the matter, Mayor Gene Hobgood showed a PowerPoint presentation about “to bid or not to bid” and showed prices other cities pay for waste-hauling services. Cities he compared Canton’s pricing to included Dallas, Hiram, Woodstock and Forest Park. Hobgood said the list of cities was chosen at random.
“I called everyone I could think of,” he said. “It’s random, because a lot of cities do their own.”
There has been contention among council members regarding the Waste Management contract, because some say the original plan was to seek a six-month extension from Waste Management at the current pricing and go out for bid. Following discussions at the Feb. 9 committee meeting, the committee recommended that the city extend the current contract for 30 months at the current pricing.
The city council approved the contract 4-1-1, with Beresford opposing, and Ward I Councilman Jack Goodwin abstaining. Goodwin abstained, he said, because he didn’t have all the information he needed about the recycling programs Waste Management offered to make an informed decision.
Hobgood said, at the Feb. 18 meeting, that Waste Management came back with a better deal—which was to save the city $176,000 over the 30-month contract—after finding out the city was going to seek proposals for their waste-hauling service, He said going out for bid would be the best option, because the city doesn’t know if Waste Management was giving them a good price, because they didn’t have other companies’ prices for a comparison.
In other business, the city council:
• heard from Wood, the city manager, regarding several projects, including the signal improvements on Ga. 5 and the signalization project at Ga. 20 and Northside Parkway. He said he wasn’t as confident as he would like to be on receiving 100 percent of the federal funds for the Ga. 5 signalization project at Waleska Street and the Ball Ground Highway intersections. He said he wanted to get more information before awarding the contracts for work. He also said the Canton Marketplace developer had about $145,000 in escrow for the traffic light project at the intersection on Ga. 20 at the development, and the city would have to come up with about $60,000 to $70,000 to cover remaining costs;
• heard from Wood that the city hired Emory Stephens as the interim chief financial officer. He is working four days a week, but the city still is accepting applications.
• discussed cutting impact fees to spur development. The city council is expected to discuss the proposal further at the March 23 meeting;
• heard from Goodwin, who announced that he would host a town hall meeting March 29 at 6 p.m. at city hall, 151 Elizabeth St., for people to bring up any concerns or interests they may have; and
• announced that the March 18 city council meeting has been rescheduled to March 23 at 6 p.m. at city hall, due to some council members not being able to make the originally scheduled meeting.
