St. Johns County has agreed to a contract with new trash and recycling collector FCC Environmental Services Florida, but there are still many questions that the Ponte Vedra Municipal Service District has regarding the price of the service.
The county’s new contract is set to go into effect beginning Aug. 1, but MSD chairman Al Hollon raising some issues he had with the deal, primarily 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 has been lowered from the initial price FCC presented to the MSD of $35.82.
The initial price was a shock to Hollon who stated that he had been asking for a price from FCC since the beginning of the year, and did not get anything from them until June 19, which puts the MSD in a tight spot because they must create a budget in the coming months and need to have an idea of what it will cost.
As a result, Hollon will meet with county and FCC representation to continue to negotiate the price and he also mentioned the clause in the contract that would allow the MSD to opt out and go with another vendor.
The $28.61 charged to the MSD is broken down with $17-plus charged for the second pickup and the remaining $11-plus amount due for the side door pickup for both days.
The county’s price of $21.22 per household is what they pay for the first pickup to take place with $8.62 going toward household trash, $7-plus going to yard waste and $5 and change charged for recycling.
“The big problem I’ve got is that they have already baked into that number the cost of their equipment and their labor costs for $8.62, so why should we be charged double in Ponte Vedra when you don’t charge others for the same service,” Hollon said.
Trustee Mickey White also questioned why the second trash pickup costs $17-plus while the first pickup only has a price of $8.62?
“That just doesn’t jive,” White said.
The expiring contract the county had with Republic Services began in 2003 and has been in affect for the past two decades with amendments taking place at times.
“As an administration we sat down and said now’s the time to go back out and test the market,” St. Johns County Public Works Director Greg Caldwell said. “We met with FCC and about 13 other vendors, and said ‘What will this service provider look like in the future and for the entire county?’”
According to Caldwell, the county presented six different options they were looking at to be bid on and Republic Services only bid on one of them compared to Waste Management who put in for five of the options and FCC who put a bid in for every option.
“Not only did FCC put in for every option, but their pricing countywide from year one, the second lowest to them was about a $12 million gap,” Caldwell said. “We’ve been hearing about other counties and municipalities going through an extreme increase in household collection cost, but we (St. Johns County) went from $15.61 per house to $21.22, which we were pretty excited about.”
