City Councilmember At Large Rebecca Kaplan, who is running for mayor, trumpeted the savings offered by lower rates from CWS, as did Councilmember Larry Reid, whose daughter Treva used to work for CWS.
The fact that city public works officials and an outside consultant hired by the city recommended against awarding the contract to CWS somehow was overlooked when the Council voted to give the contract to David Duong's CWS. We raised some questions about this in late June.
It's useful to note that when Duong was bidding for a solid waste garbage contract in Contra Costa County last fall, he promoted the availability of the CWS Materials Recycling Facilities in Oakland to accommodate an additional 250,000 tons a year hauled into that West Oakland neighborhood. This is the same neighborhood that has been waiting for CWS and Cass Metals to move their recycling facilities to the former Oakland Army base, a solution that was applauded by all over two years ago and seems no closer to fruition.
At a City Council hearing on July 1, speaker after speaker rose to voice opinions against the CWS proposal. Don Crosatto from Machinists Local 1546, which provides repair mechanics for both CWS and Waste Management, the current holder of the Oakland garbage contract, was particularly critical of CWS's lack of facilities to carry out the contract's requirements.
"CWS is a very small Mom and Pop operation, it doesn't have the facilities to handle 15 trucks, and the last thing you want is 50-100 trucks that need repair but can't be maintained," Crosatto said. "Garbage trucks take a tremendous pounding on the streets. Waste Management has a good solid professional maintenance facility.
On paper CWS will have something four or five years from now. But this is a 365-days a year operation, and switching over to a new provider requires months of prep work a transition of this magnitude."
The East Bay Express reported similar concerns from Doug Bloch, political director for the Teamsters Joint Council 7, which represents drivers at CWS and Waste Management: "The biggest fear is that people's garbage is not going to picked up," he is quoted as saying. The Teamsters, like the Machinists, had spoken in favor of Waste Management's proposal due to concerns about potential service problems under CWS.
Another fear, Bloch said, is that CWS's rates will eventually exceed the 24 percent increase it promised to $36.82, compared to the 30 percent increase to $38.71 offered by Waste Management. Both are substantially more than the current homeowner's rate of $29.80.
"They are putting together an operation that doesn't currently exist, so they can only guess what their costs are going to be," Bloch said of CWS.
Transitions to new garbage companies often bring challenges like missed pickups, Bloch told East Bay Express, "but what exacerbates it with CWS is the fact they are taking on a project that's bigger than anything they've done, and they don't have any of the infrastructure in place right now."
Much of CWS's proposal is based on building a new sorting and recycling facility at the former army base site in West Oakland, the same one everyone has been waiting for since 2012. Now CWS says that project, called the North Gateway Facility, may take three to five years to complete, and it still need permits to proceed.
Those issues didn't seem to stop the City Council. Levin points out additional environmental and recycling concerns about CWS's track record, notably its failure to reach agreed diversion goals - to divert food waste and recyclable materials from landfill - in its contract with the city of San Jose since 2006.
Levin said Peter Slote, Oakland's acting solid waste and recycling program supervisor, told him a week before the Council vote: "It's a profound difference in the environmental outcomes," pointing to the city's findings that Waste Management, over 10 years, could divert more than 200,000 additional tons of recyclables and green waste from the landfill compared to CWS. That's equivalent to one year's worth of Oakland garbage.
Mayor Jean Quan, Councilmember and mayoral challenger Libby Schaaf and Council President Pat Kernighan each took time to acknowledge the hard work and many years which staff put into the solid waste process at the public hearing, yet they and the entire City Council went against staff recommendations. At some point Oakland's leaders have to ask themselves if their trust their departmental staffs of not? Otherwise, why have them spend hundreds of hours and significant resources towards a matter just to simply undermine those efforts based on which way the wind is blowing politically. Don't get me wrong, I support their support of a minority-owned local business, but to ignore staff's recommendations twice seems counterintuitive to smart government.
Of course, Kaplan, in her self-congratulatory "we saved you money" email to campaign supporters, never mentioned Peter Slote's concerns or those of the Teamsters or Machinists spokesmen. This contract deserves a hard look from the Council before its final vote on August 13, and voters should remind these politicians that Oakland deserves better.
