The Clovis City Council was not ready to award a 10-year recycling contract at its meeting Tuesday night.

Staff recommended the contract for residential and commercial go to the lowest bidder, Mid Valley Disposal. However, on a 3-2 vote, the council asked staff to split the contracts and return with a new Request for Proposal.

Lynne Ashbeck, Matt Basgall and Drew Bessinger voted for the delay; Vong Mouanoutoua and Diane Pearce opposed it.

Basgall said recycling is a complicated issue.

“That’s why I voted for splitting the contracts and keeping them separate so that we get an actual sustainable number on what that’s going to cost,” Basgall said after the meeting.

Ashbeck expressed concern that the lowest bid did not consider city growth.

“It cannot be the same framework. And I felt like we just took that last ten-year contract and made it the next ten-year contract. And that to me was a mistake,” Ashbeck said.

Said Pearce afterward: “I did not hear anything I felt was legitimate or tangible in terms of benefiting the ratepayers and community with that decision.”

Republic Services Has Current Recycling Contract

The vote could mean continuing for now with current recycling provider Republic Services.

A Republic Services representative said the company is amenable to a short-term extension.

Joseph Kalpakoff, president/CEO of Mid Valley Disposal, took the news in stride.

“Councilmembers wanted to explore a variety of arrangements not contemplated in the initial request for proposals, regardless of potential cost increases for Clovis residents — both in the short and long term,” Kalpakoff told GV Wire.

He added that the company looks forward to the new RFP, “and again demonstrating Mid Valley is the best value for residents and delivers the highest quality of service.”

A Conflict of Interest?

At the end of the discussion, Scott Redelfs, Clovis public utilities director, revealed that city’s consultant on the initial RFP, HF&H Consultants, was not included in the “post-processing” and scoring of bidders because of a potential conflict of interest.

“They worked with Mid Valley in prior … ” Redelfs said to an audible gasp from the audience. Redelfs did not clarify the exact conflict.

Kalpakoff said his company has never worked directly with HF&H.

“Our only experience interacting with the firm is as a successful competitive bidder in Valley communities,” Kalpakoff said.

The city paid its consultant $60,000. Before the revelation, councilmembers were already unhappy with other aspects of the consultant’s work. In fact, Ashbeck had already made a motion to split the new RFP without using HF&H.

Pearce said the city handled the situation correctly.

“Our staff intentionally ended the city’s relationship with the consultant on this process after the creation of the RFP. That was done specifically to avoid any potential concern of a conflict,” Pearce told GV Wire.

Basgall said re-bidding the contract should alleviate any potential problem.

Thursday, after this story first published, the city said Redelfs’ comments during the meeting were a “misstatement.”

“HF&H has been involved in preparing similar RFPs for services for other public agencies in which contracts were awarded to Caglia Environmental, Republic Services, and/or Mid Valley Disposal, but that is not a conflict of interest,” Chad McCollum, Clovis’ economic development, housing and communications director said.

HF&H helped prepare the RFP, McCollum said, which was the extent of the work. The consultant did not participate in interview or ranking the bidders.

“There is no conflict of interest regarding this issue. The record will be corrected in this regard,” McCollum said.

HF&H did not respond to GV Wire’s requests for comment.

Contract Expires July 31

The contract held by Republic Services expires July 31. Three companies bid for the new contract: Republic, MVD and Caglia Environmental.

All three bids were significantly more than the current $4.6 million contract — the amount just for residential service. City staff said inflation and new state requirements regarding collecting and disposal of organic materials are the reasons for the increase.

MVD bid $5.5 million, or 20% higher than the current service. Caglia’s and Republic’s bids had increases of 45% and 79%, respectively.

Commercial services are billed directly, and the numbers for the three bidders were similar. The city provides trash service itself.

Representatives from all three companies spoke during the meeting.

Ashley Collie from Republic Services, and Richard Caglia, president of Caglia Environmental, criticized portions of the RFP.

Kalpakoff said all three companies received the same RFP and used their “one chance” to show their best. He said their bid was $1.4 million less.

“You got 1.4 million reasons to vote for me today. I ask for your vote. I ask for your confidence because we have multiple cities that rely on us every single day,” Kalpakoff said.

Caglia supported splitting the residential and commercial recycling contracts.

He said the city should consider one of the three companies possibly taking over residential trash collection. Doing so, Caglia said, would alleviate the city of the cost of state-mandated switches to electric fleets.