Agenda Packets - 2024/03/25 - Laserfiche WebLink

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March 18, 2024 Mayor Zach Lindstrom City of Mounds View 2401 Mounds View Boulevard Mounds View, MN 55112 Dear Mayor Lindstrom, We, the participating waste haulers in the current organized collection negotiations, are aware of your remarks at the March 11, 2024, city council meeting regarding the status of negotiations. While the March 21, 2024, deadline you declared wasn't formally delivered to us through your negotiations team or through any other negotiations channel, we assume that the deadline reflects an official city position and offer this response in an attempt to assist the parties in reaching an agreement. At the outset, we respectfully decline the city's invitation to re -submit our pricing offer at a lower price. The pricing offer we made was thoughtful, logical, and defensible. We're proud of our offer sheet, which is the product of many hours of research, discussion, and work amongst the participating haulers. More importantly, the pricing offer is an accurate reflection of the terms and conditions of the underlying contract to which the parties have tentatively agreed. We were clear at the outset of negotiations that the pricing terms would be driven by the underlying contract. The underlying contract reflects many terms and conditions that the city offered and insisted upon throughout. The foundation of the underlying contract was a 50-odd page draft contract the city proffered early in the negotiations. This foundational contract contained numerous terms and conditions that increased the price vis-a-vis other organized collection contracts found in nearby cities. The average organized collection contract in a suburban city is approximately 15 pages and contains little of what is found in the current tentative agreement. We noted throughout negotiations that the city's requests were in many cases expensive and would have to be reflected in the price. In short, without changes to the tentatively agreed upon terms and conditions of the underlying contract, there can be no meaningful changes to price from us. Next, we are concerned that the city may not clearly understand the complexity and therefore the differences between the various organized collection contracts in nearby cities. Making "headline" price comparisons between organized collection contracts oversimplifies things and can lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the price offered to Mounds View versus the price found in other contracts.