Commissioner’s Ignore Weston Mayor’s Attempts To Defend His No-Bid Waste Deal

BY BUDDY NEVINS

Weston Mayor Eric Hersh made a last-minute plea to approve the county’s $1 billion, no-bid deal for waste disposal that he negotiated.

Hersh warned commissioners that the contract had to be signed before the end of December, or it would be renegotiated.  Commissioners are not scheduled to meet again in December.

Acting after Browardbeat.com published a call from Sunrise Mayor Mike Ryan to reject the current deal, Hersh predicted that any new negotiations would result in county taxpayers paying more for waste disposal.

The no-bid deal was hammered together by the little-known county Resource Recovery Board with Hersh handling the negotiations.

Hersh and County Commission Ilene Lieberman argue that the negotiations did not result in a no-bid deal because they took “requests for indication of interest from 25 firms. Browardbeat.com and Browardbulldog.org both reported that this process did not include taking firm bids to compare with renewing the current contract.

After seeing the “indications of interest, the county board decided on its own to sign a new contract with Waste Management rather than take bids.

Hersh told commissioners that the no-bid contract renegotiated with Waste Management would save taxpayers $400-500 million.  He did not mention that the contract is filled with potential increases in costs and that it could last 20 years, when the current waste disposal technologies will probably be outdated.

Everybody agrees that the current contract to dispose waste at two county-funded plants one in Davie and another off Florida’s Turnpike in North Broward was a bad agreement. Cities are paying approximately double to burn waste at the county plants compared to the cost of hauling it to a landfill.

The current contract expires in 2013.

Commissioners heard Hersh’s short comments and moved the debate to January.

It appears now that every city will have to reconsider where their waste haulers will dispose of trash after 2013. 

Mayor Richard Kaplan of Lauderhill wrote a comment on Browardbeat.com earlier Tuesday that their city received its cheapest bid for hauling which didn’t use the county’s facilities, which seems to contradict Hersh’s statement to commissioners.



3 Responses to “Commissioner’s Ignore Weston Mayor’s Attempts To Defend His No-Bid Waste Deal”

  1. JD says:

    Nicely done. I think Hersh is at term limits in Weston. Too bad, as I so would have liked to vote against him because of this.

  2. HGA says:

    Also do some searching regarding the Signing Bonus that was proposed by someone on the Resource Recovery Board to sweeten the pot for cities.

  3. Bob says:

    The signing bonus is no more than a bribe to the city councils. It is a lump sum they can spend on pet project rather than reimburse their citizen for the high prices they pay for trash.

    Regarding the deal, Hirsch was trying to make a name for himself so he could run for higher office. Hopefully that train wreck is over now that he has bungled this deal.

    Also, he runs the richest city in Broward, it makes no sense for him to negotiate for the the poorest cities in the county. He has no perspective. He thinks he got a great deal. It’s like him telling someone on a corner on Sistrunk Blvd what a great deal on a he just got a him new Rolls and that he can get them a good deal on a new one too!