On June 25, 2012 there was a bid (Bid #12-2012) for “Residential refuse and bulk collection services for one, two and three family homes in the unincorporated portion of the Town of Clarkstown;” these bids were due on July 9, 2012 at 11 a.m. On July 9, the bids were opened and read, there were two bidders AAA Carting & Rubbish Removal, Inc. and Clarkstown Carting Association.
There were three separate things that needed to be bid on.
The first of which was the unit cost for the period January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2017 for garbage collection (unit price per eligible dwelling unit per month). AAA Carting bid $21.00 per home and Clarkstown Carting Association bid $23.14 per home.
The second was Bulk Waste Collection for the same period (unit price per eligible dwelling unit per month) AAA Carting bid $3.34 per home and Clarkstown Carting Association bid $3.55 per home.
The third was Bulk Waste Collection for Senior Citizen Exemption (unit price per eligible dwelling unit per month) AAA Carting bid $3.34 per home and Clarkstown Carting Association bid no charge. One of the other items was the Senior Citizen Exemption for garbage collection that was at a rate that could not be changed of $10.00 per month.
I know by looking at the numbers it doesn’t not seem like it is a very big difference until you take into consideration the size of the unincorporated portion of the Town of Clarkstown, There are 21,967 one, two, and three family home and 592 senior exemptions. AAA Carting’s pricing works out to $24.34 per home per month and $13.34 per month for senior citizen exemptions. Clarkstown Carting Association’s bid is $26.69 per home and $10.00 per month for senior citizen exemptions. See chart below for pricing break out:
Company
Homes
Seniors
Monthly
Yearly
AAA
$24.34
$13.34
$542,574.06
$6,510,888.72
CCA
$26.69
$10.00
$592,219.23
$7,106,630.76
Difference
$2.35
-$3.34
$49,645.17
$595,742.04
5 Year contract
Savings
Total of
$2,978,710.20
What is not shown here in this chart is the current price being billed to the Town based on estimates and CPI increases (it is not clearly broken out on the current budget) the Town is probably paying around $7,595,293.19. AAA’s pricing should save the town about $1,084,404.47.
Unfortunately on October 2 at the Town Board meeting there was a resolution put forth stating “AAA Carting did not satisfy or address several of the conditions set forth in the bid.”
I have enclosed a copy of the resolution (which is attached to this article as a PDF). This resolution shows that there were letters sent back and forth between AAA and the Town of Clarkstown. We in two letters addressed all their concerns. If you F.O.I.L. those letters you can see. We had also on numerous occasions requested and audience with the Town to discuss anything they might not be comfortable with, we also tried on numerous occasions to call the Town to speak to them regarding these few points and all to no avail no one called back and no one would sit and speak with us.
I do not understand how a Town who is contemplating a 6.2% tax increase would not jump at the opportunity to save almost .5% on one line item in the budget or almost .8% on what we estimated was budgeted on the 2012 budget.
Pat Cartalemi
