Quorum Court mulls breaking current solid waste contract, absorbing collection into county-controlled service
by J.D. Bailey on 08/02/22
With only a year before Columbia County’s current solid waste collection contract expires, members of the Columbia County Quorum Court met this week to discuss possible options moving forward with the public service.
Over time, the county’s governing board has become increasingly agitated with its current contractor, GFL Environmental, Inc. (formerly WCA), and recently began brainstorming to find all possible options going into the next contract discussion. These talks have included the idea of heavily amending the current deal or even settling on a new contractor. They have also included the idea of the county taking over collection services itself, thus terminating the need for a contractor altogether.
“Everyone needs to be considering this issue, because (the contract) is going to be running out pretty quick,” said Columbia County Judge Denny Foster on Monday.
The county’s current contract with GFL Environmental ends on July 31, 2023. The extension window for the current deal, however, ends 90 days prior, which leaves the county with only about nine months to decide its next move.
The county government currently pays around $187,000 per month for contracted solid waste pickup services. This fee includes a fleet of waste trucks, a grapple truck, and one recycle pickup truck, as well as all drivers and equipment maintenance responsibilities. It also includes collection and solid waste dumping services at GFL’s landfill in Union County and recycle collection and dumping at Abilities Unlimited Recycle Center in Magnolia.
Although an extension of the current contract could still be in play, no one in the county's government expects the cost of business to be the same with such a rise in inflation and fuel costs since 2020.
“I don’t know how high it’s going to be, but you can bet it sure isn’t going to go down,” said Foster.
According to Columbia County Attorney Becky Jones, the current contract is only two pages long (not including bid proposals) and does not spell out any remedies to issues the county JPs currently have with their solid waste provider.
“I’ve never seen a contract that’s only two pages,” Foster added.
Some estimates from county officials believe the basic framework of the current contract goes back to 1994 and has not been altered much since then.
Columbia County’s relationship with GFL Environmental dates back to at least 2015 when the county signed a three-year deal with the company. In 2018, the Columbia County Quorum Court voted to extend the contract another five years, or until July 31, 2023. If talks on Monday are any indicator, if the county does decide to move forward with GFL Environmental again, the terms of services would need to be addressed and improved to help resolve many of the current issues with the contractor.
“If we do not change (providers), I want to see some lettering in the contract for services to give us some leeway to charge against them for services we’re not receiving,” said JP Russell Thomas.
Currently, according to county officials, there is little or no recourse for the county to recoup the cost of trash containers broken by GFL Environmental during pickup, and there is little or no recourse for trash flying out of the trucks as they drive down the road.
To compound matters, the county last year, according to the county judge, spent around $80,000 repairing and replacing cans that were broken during collection.
If the county did absorb the services into its government, it would be funded by the local Solid Waste tax fund, which also pays for the current solid waste contract. The local government would also have full control over all aspects of the pickup, including hiring and firing drivers, buying or leasing trucks and equipment, funding repairs, cleaning and maintaining the fleet, and paying for the use of a nearby approved dump sight -- likely GFL's site in Union County.
This method, though, would not be without its own set of challenges and issues. It would put a much heavier workload on the county solid waste department and a supervisor and full driving staff and fleet would have to be acquired. But, with such an ongoing equipment shortage, collection trucks may not even be available to lease by the time the current GFL Environmental contract runs out next year.
“They’re saying right now it’s going to be 15 months,” said Foster. “… It’s so bad, we can’t even get parts to repair things right now.”
If the county does elect to take over the collection, it would not be foreign to the area. According to JP Oliver Thomas, chairman of the Columbia County Quorum Court's Solid Waste Committee, both Union and Ouachita Counties currently provide their own solid waste services.
"Union County has its own solid waste supervisor," he said, "but the county judge in Ouachita County said he oversees the service."
Columbia County also already has a bit of head start on the conversion, should it occur, because the county already owns all of its own trash collection containers -- a rarity among most local governments now.
“We’re one of the few counties that own their own cans,” said Foster. “That’s a plus for us (if we go out on our own).”
Columbia County also currently employs two grapple truck drivers in its local fleet to aid in local yard waste collection. The hirings were made in 2020, according to the county judge, to help offset the lack of collection production by GFL Environmental.
“That’s part of (GFL) duties, but they don’t have enough trucks to handle it properly,” he said. “I saw a problem, and I fixed it. You don’t want yard waste piling up in everyone’s neighborhood.”
Nothing was decided at Monday’s meeting, but county officials said they hope to see the actual solid waste contract with GFL Environmental and discuss and expand its language soon. The JPs also said they will try to investigate more into Ouachita and Union County practices and expenses associated with providing their own solid waste services.
“I think we need to get the old contract out and see how many trucks we’re going to have to look at, how many additional drivers we’re going to find, what rate of pay, and everything else,” said Foster.
To try to help matters in the meantime, the county judge said Monday the he has thought about having county law enforcement issue littering violation tickets to GFL trucks if they continue to fling loose garbage onto the local roadways while driving.
"Would that get their attention?" Foster asked.
The current fine for commercial littering in Arkansas is between $100 and $1,000 for first-time offenders. Repeat offenders can be fined anywhere from $200 to $2,000, according to state law.
The crime is a class A misdemeanor in The Natural State.
In other Columbia County News:
- The Quorum Court voted unanimously Monday to fund $90,000 in improvements at the Columbia County Detention Center. The monies will be moved from the county’s Special Projects Fund into the county’s Jail Budget to remedy issues at the facility. The improvements include sprinkler system repairs, the installation of a new fire alarm system, and the replacement of the facility’s door-lock and intercom system.
In another item, for the detention center, the Quorum Court approved a $20,000 appropriation ordinance to fund the housing of arrested or detained juveniles in facilities throughout the state. According to federal law, minors, unless specifically granted special permission by a judge, cannot be housed with adult inmate populations. And since the Columbia County Detention Center does not contain a juvenile facility, the inmates must be housed at the nearest minor-specific facility, at the cost of the county.
Currently, according to Columbia County Judge Denny Foster, most local inmates are being held at a juvenile facility in Jonesboro. Texarkana also has a juvenile housing center, but the property is currently full, according to the county official, and Jonesboro was the nearest facility with any vacancies.
- The Columbia County Circuit Clerk’s office was approved to apply for a grant through the Association of Arkansas Counties that could see the indices of all oil, gas, and mortgages scanned into an overall online service database to help ease the use of record-finding for research purposes. In total, around 75 large deed and record books could be scanned into the new online system.
The project will also require a new firewall program to be installed at the county office to help improve the security of its network.
In all, the total value of the grant could be north of $43,000. The record scanning would account for $39,995, while the firewall would be valued at just over $3,100.
The grant application was passed unanimously by the Quorum Court.
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