Down in the dumps

By Rich Flowers

May 08, 2008 09:14 am

— The Henderson County Commissioners Court is ready to seek bids for a new vendor to supply sanitation service dumpsters located at the four precinct headquarters.
Commissioners on Tuesday told County Purchasing Director Sherry Carmichael to start the bid process in response to a letter from Total Sanitation of Malakoff stating the company is raising its rates by 13 percent. The county’s contract with Total called for the company to provide service at the original rate until August.
Carmichael told commissioners the letter, dated April 28, does not request a rate change but rather, informs the county the increase has gone into effect.
Pct. 2 Commissioner Wade McKinney explained the county has three options in dealing with the rate increase. The county can:
• disallow the Total Sanitation rate increase and take a chance that service to the dumpsters be discontinued;
• go for a rebid now and pay the price increase until a new vendor be brought into service; or
• cancel the contract with Total and go with the back-up bidder.
“I would think because they’re breaking the contract that we could go out for new bids immediately,” County Judge David Holstein said.
Also included in the letter was a statement of Total’s intent to charge the county an overweight fee and $25 each to repair the dumpsters. Pct. 3 Commissioner Ronny Lawrence said he opposes the repair charge because he has experienced problems with the dumpsters since they arrived. Pct. 4 Commissioner Jerry West also noted problems.
“Those dumpsters had been brought to my precincts where the tailgate wouldn’t latch. I called them before anything had ever been dumped in there and they came out and fixed it,” West said. “I’m not paying $25 out of my precinct (funds) for any dumpster.”
West said he would not oppose paying Total a small increase in the rate to cover increased fuel costs until a new bid could be awarded.
“We’re going to have to suffer a little bit of an increase until we get the bids in,” West said. “We might have to eat that cost.”
Carmichael said the county has been paying $385 for pick-up of open top dumpsters, and $425 for a dumpster with a compactor located in Pct. 2. McKinney said it costs about $42,000 to empty the Pct. 2 dumpsters for a year.
Holstein said the county will review recent invoices from Total before making a determination about what amount to pay for the services rendered since the rate increase.