Agenda Packets - 2024/03/25 - Laserfiche WebLink

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March 11, 2024 Via Email A. The City's delayed and misrepresented City Council workshop Over the last few weeks, with the exception of some legal language requiring review and discussion, the hauler consortium and city staff have fundamentally agreed on the terms of a seven-year contract. In particular, they agreed on the contractual items that drive the price of service. After a great deal of time and effort, the hauler consortium presented a pricing proposal on Sunday, February 25 that reflects those agreed upon service items. City Administrator Nyle Zikmund and city attorney Rachel Tierney asked if this was the hauler consortium's best and final offer. The consortium emphatically said that it was not, that they believe the proposal is competitive given current economic conditions, and that they looked forward to a counter-offer to keep the negotiations moving forward. Moving forward, the City advised first that it would have a workshop on March 5, with virtually all members of the consortium planning on attending. At a March 4 meeting between the City and haulers, Zikmund suddenly advised that the March 5 meeting was being moved to March 6, and he described the workshop as a meeting where staff would update the City Council on the status of negotiations and present the latest information and data. With other scheduling conflicts and on such short notice, only one member of the group was able to attend on March 6 rather than 5 (from Republic Services, not one of my clients). The haulers were not uncomfortable at the time given the Zikmund's representation about the meeting's purpose. City representatives had also told the haulers at meetings on both February 26 and 27 that City staff will be preparing two analyses to present to City Council during the upcoming workshop and that they would provide both to the haulers to all be on the same page: (1) a summary of current invoices submitted by residents ("resident invoice analysis"); and (2) a summary of other metro -area organized collection cities ("organized collection city analysis"). While the haulers received the resident invoice analysis, they had to ask for the organized collection city analysis and did not receive it until March 6 at 2:27 pm (less than four hours before the rescheduled City Council workshop). Thus, they received that analysis with no time to review it thoroughly and with only one representative able to attend that workshop. The rescheduled workshop on March 6, however, turned out to be far more consequential than the City represented. City Council was presented with the two pieces of analysis from City staff. I will revisit the substance of those analyses below. But following the review of these analyses, at the workshop, the City Council unanimously directed staff to prepare a resolution for Monday to end negotiations and turn back to the Options Committee with the assumed intent to recommend going out for a request for proposals. In short, the City Council decided at the workshop to kill the negotiations. B. The City's flawed analysis of other organized collection cities The resident invoice analysis shows that the hauler consortium proposal is, overall, favorable for those residents, in particular for those who choose a 65-gallon cart. This was done to respect the City goal of rewarding those who throw away less. That analysis seemed to be ignored during the workshop, and based on a short review and discussion of the organized collection city analysis, the City Council ended negotiations.