Five bids opened, but new trash service not selected

Chairman Tom DeRosa plans to meet today with ProWaste, which submitted the lowest bid.

Forward Township is one step closer to selecting a refuse hauler, but a final decision hasn’t been made.

Monday morning, five sealed bids were opened from companies interested in providing garbage service in the township. However, supervisors didn’t choose who will receive the contract at Monday evening’s meeting despite it being the only item under new business.

It will mark the first time in nearly 30 years residents of Forward Township will have to pay for their garbage service. A 1996 host municipality fee agreement signed between the township and Kelly Run Sanitation is about to come to an end.

The agreement stipulated that the landfill would provide free garbage service for residential properties through the term of the agreement, which would end when the landfill reached capacity.

Right now, there are 1,390 homes in Forward Township that will be affected.

Five bids were opened 10 a.m. Monday. ProWaste LLC, Waste Management, Fayette Waste, Big’s and Noble Environmental all submitted bids that met the requirements set by the township, which asked for a three-year service contract starting Sept. 1 with collection weekly on Wednesdays with a time to be determined.

ProWaste came in as the lowest bidder, with an average cost of $19 per month, if the company handles the billing.

Garbage would cost $17 monthly with ProWaste if billing is handled in house.

Big’s Sanitation had the highest bid, with a monthly rate per household sitting at $27.85 if they handle billing and $22 per month if it’s done by the township.

Fayette Waste and Waste Management both came in around $24 per month if bill- ings were to be handled by the companies. Monthly prices would cost about $5 per month less with Fayette Waste if the company didn’t do billing and about $7 less with WM if it was also done in house.

Noble Environmental would cost $21.99 per month, but billing would have to be handled by the township.

Though awarding the garbage contract was the only item up for a vote under new business, there wasn’t much of discussion on the bids themselves. However, there was opposition from Supervisor Dave Levdansky on the ratification of a motion to solicit the bids in the first place.

On June 9, an ad was placed in the Mon Valley Independent seeking bids for refuse service.

It wasn’t voted on ahead of time, so Levdansky objected to ratifying the solicitation for bids after the fact.

“Placing an ad in the newspaper requires public notification and requires a vote of this board,” Levdansky said. “(If) you recall, we voted as a board to advertise the notice for the chicken ordinance, okay, but we didn’t vote to advertise for bids for garbage collection.”

He believes it is a matter of principle.

“These votes by this board are important because such votes to advertise bids begin the public notification process,” he said, “and that process is designed to inform the public, to educate our citizens about a particular issue or matter that we’re going to have to deal with, so that all of you, the public, who we’re all elected and privileged to serve, have a chance to offer your thoughts, your opinions, your views, your concerns and what problems you think we need to be focused on.

“This motion to ratify is kind of like horses are out of the barn, trying to undo something that’s done, like pulling onto the turnpike and blowing through the ticketing gantry and at the end of the trip saying ‘Oh yeah, I forgot to pick up the ticket.”

He claims it is a violation of the law, and said it’s important to follow the spirit of the law in how township business is handled.

“So I think you know, a motion to ratify an advertisement that we should have voted on back in May and started this whole process to inform and educate the public and for us to solicit your opinions and concerns, I think this is the wrong way to go,” Levdansky said. “The cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, the horses are out of the barn.

“However, whatever, whatever anecdote you’d like to fit in there. I think it’s just the wrong thing to do at this point, we made a mistake before and I don’t want to compound it by another mistake of voting to ratify something that we should have voted on.”

While the Sunshine Act mandates that discussions leading to official actions occur at public meetings to ensure transparency, it doesn’t specifically address the process of “ratifying” motions as a separate step.

Solicitor Matt Racunas explained the process and reasons for ratification to make sure the audience understood, and said voting to ratify the ad for garbage bids did not violate the law.

“I just want to clarify a couple of points, because you’re (Levdansky) bringing up questions about the spirit and letter of law,” Racunas said. “I represent 20-plus municipal entities. Ratification is a common process. It’s not an ideal process. It’s not one that you want to engage in all the time, but municipalities all over this commonwealth have to ratify in a lot of actions, so it’s common.

“Because meetings only happen once a month, there are things a lot of the time that can’t wait for the next month. So while I understand and I appreciate what supervisor Levdansky says about the spirit of the law and him not wanting us to use ratification as a regular process and to avoid it if we can, I want to be clear. As legal counsel, I want the public to know there is nothing illegal or improper about using ratification to approve a vote.”

Levdansky tried to comment again, but Racunas said he did not have an interest in debating with him.

“I don’t want to debate you either, but the point is if it was important and it was inadvertent we could have called a special meeting to have the proper vote to advertise for the bids,” Levdansky said.

The cost to advertise for bids would cost about the same as it would be to advertise a special meeting, Racunas said.

“So I see your point and you could do that if you wanted to, but because it’s just the ad, it wasn’t the important vote which is awarding the bid,” Racunas added. “You would spend just as much money for that ad as you would a special meeting, so it would not make much sense financially. I am just saying from a practical standpoint.”

Levdansky voted against ratifying the ad for garbage bids, with Chairman Tom DeRosa and Amy Cline supporting it.

After the vote, DeRosa briefly explained himself, but refused to get into a back in forth with Levdansky this month.

“Everybody was worried about the dump and everybody was excited about us not having bids out,” DeRosa said. “I heard it from everybody in this room. So Waste Management came up here and said they were going to close two months earlier. It wouldn’t be in November, it would be (maybe) the end of August. It’s nice to have a supervisor next to you that you can talk to, to have someone around once in a while. Mr. Levdansky is like Punxsutawney Phil, he saw his shadow a year and a half ago and never came back.”

“You don’t call me, Tom,” Levdansky said.

“I’m not calling you, David. I told you that a million times, I’m not,” DeRosa said. “So I called Amy and asked her if she wanted to advertise for garbage and she said yes, so we advertised. I didn’t want to waste two more weeks, so if you think it’s wrong that’s too bad because the ratification is legal.”

Supervisors did not make a motion to amend the agenda or to table awarding the garbage contract.

DeRosa said he plans to meet with representatives of ProWaste today to further discuss the contract and get on the same page.

He said supervisors will likely vote to award the contract next month.

In other business, supervisors unanimously agreed to name Cline the vice chairperson of the board.