C&C seeking sanitation contract to be rebid – LaGrange Daily News

The Troup County Commission is preparing to turn sanitation services over to Martin Environmental on July 1, but if C&C Sanitation has its way, the entire process will be re-bid. Despite the county awarding Martin an exclusive contract and updating its ordinance to add further clarification regarding the inclusion of recycling, C&C is still planning to move forward with its one-bin recycling program.

When the bids for the sanitation contract were publicly released on April 4, many assumed that C&C would have bid on the contract, including county officials. However, C&C did not submit a bid.

Three companies, AmWaste, out of West Point; Martin Environmental Services, out of Dothan, Alabama; and Red Oak Sanitation & Recycling, out of Cumming; submitted bids for the exclusive franchise contract. Ultimately, the commission voted 3-2 in favor of awarding Martin the contract on April 18.

At the time, county staff indicated that C&C did not bid because the company did not have enough trucks to adequately provide the service, and they didn’t think they were going to be able to purchase enough in time. Attorneys for C&C later confirmed that is the case.

C&C owner Lisa Durden said County Manager Eric Mosley had notified her in April 2022 via text message that the county was likely going to seek bids for the sanitation service.

“When we got this [information], we ordered our trucks, which started slowly coming in. We said that at every board meeting. He [later] sent me a text and said, ‘I’m shocked you didn’t bid,’” Durden said.

“Our position is we did not put a bid in, under this proposal, because at that time we didn’t have sufficient trucks and equipment to do it. But we went and started purchasing, trying to arrange for them, but we weren’t going to have them in time,” said Neal Callahan, an attorney representing C&C.

Callahan said C&C looked to see if the county was going to make their trucks available for sale or lease, but they never appeared on a government sales site.

“When Martin Environmental got the bid and got the franchise agreement, they also leased the trucks from the county. We never knew that was an option. We absolutely would have put in a bid if we knew that was an option,” Callahan said.

C&C contends that they tried to talk to Mosley, but he said he could not talk to them during the bid process, so they couldn’t discuss potentially purchasing or leasing the county’s trucks.

“I tried to call Eric, and he told me he couldn’t take my call,” Durden said.

“We believe that he must have talked with Martin Environmental, otherwise, they wouldn’t have known about it, so Martin Environmental had an unfair advantage over us in the bid proposal,” Callahan said.

The LaGrange Daily News asked for an interview with County Manager Eric Mosley for this story. Mosley asked the LDN to send questions via email, and the newspaper sent him nine questions. Mosley reviewed the questions and declined an interview.

In previous meetings, Mosley said the county negotiated leasing equipment with Martin after the bid was accepted, which helped lower the monthly rate from $31.50 for curbside trash pickup to $29.90 per month.

Callahan said he has since filed an open record request asking for all communication between the county manager’s office, the commissioners and any of the three businesses that submitted bids. He said he was told the request was too ambiguous and to try to limit the scope. He said he was later told it would be June 15 before the county would be able to fulfill the request.

A May 15 letter Callahan provided the LDN from County Attorney Mark DeGennaro responding to the open record request does confirm that date.

“Text messages are not maintained on any central database and would have to be individually searched on phones, printed out and reviewed and it would take at least until June 15, 2023 to complete gathering and reviewing any responsive text messages for the same period,” the letter reads.

Callahan also believes the county could be retaliating against C&C because of the open records request.

“We sent that request on April 15. We’ve had a transfer station for over three years. The county has been using it to the tune of about $270,000 a year. The county had no problem with it. Suddenly on April 15, when I sent my open records request asking for Eric Mosley’s texts, three days later, they stopped using…