Residents in the Ponte Vedra Municipal Service District will have the same trash, recycle and yard waste service they have been accustomed to just with a different provider after the MSD board unanimously voted to accept a contract with St. Johns County and FCC Environmental Services Florida, LLC a special meeting on July 19.
The county’s new contract is set to go into effect beginning Aug. 1, which meant that the MSD had to schedule the special meeting to discuss the topic solely after much discussion and disagreement with the pricing of the deal at the most recent MSD meeting on July 8.
One of the sticking points was the fact that the MSD would have to pay roughly double the rate they had been paying for the same service parameters.
According to Hollon, the MSD is currently paying $13.77 per household for two-day service and side door pickup, and that would increase to $28.61, which had already been lowered from the initial price FCC presented to the MSD of $35.82.
Hollon met further with county and FCC officials and worked out some stipulations to the contract with MSD attorney Wayne Flowers prior to presenting it to be voted on by the board during the special meeting.
“I’ve done everything I can to get the price lower, but that’s the best we can come up with at this time,” Hollon said.
One of the main stipulations added to the contract by the MSD is to have an audit conducted within 30 days of the effective date of the contract, which will be used to calculate a proper number of homes in the MSD that are not conducive to have a rear-door pickup service.
FCC has agreed to adapt the overall price to reflect the findings of the audit by only pricing those households for two-day service pickup and not for the rear-door option.
According to Hollon, he believes the audit could find up to a couple of hundred houses that could be found not suitable for the service which could possibly drop the MSD’s total from 1,403 housing units to around 1,100 receiving the rear-door pickup.
“I do feel like this is a reasonable rate that they (FCC) have brought forth,” St. Johns County Public Works Director Greg Caldwell said.
Caldwell also stated that each of FCC’s trucks will be equipped with third-eye technology, which would implement six different camera angles on the vehicles, which will allow for the best service possible.
Trustee Kitty Switkes asked if the board could come back and make further changes to the contract in a year? Hollon said, yes.
Overall, the county’s deal with FCC is a seven-year contract with two five-year renewals and would increase the MSD’s waste collection budget from $19,333 to an estimated $36,740 per month, assuming the audit finds 300 homes that are not viable for side-door pickup.
“We (St. Johns County) are going to dip into our reserves for solid waste to pay for this year’s increase with the understanding of making sure that we have a new provider that will provide a high level of service, which we totally expect them to do,” Caldwell said.
