Review finds Norcal pick was fair

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Sep 26, 2008 | by Shaun Bishop

The process used to pick Norcal Waste Systems for a new trash- hauling contract on the Peninsula was fair and unbiased, according to an outside consultant's review.

In recent weeks, elected officials and other companies that bid for the 10-year curbside collection contract questioned the transparency and objectivity of the South Bayside Waste Management Authority's selection process.

Authority board Chairman Larry Patterson ordered the outside assessment to erase any doubt among the authority's 12 members -- including 10 cities from Burlingame to East Palo Alto -- that must vote individually to ratify the selection of Norcal.

The report came nearly a month after the authority's board voted to pick Norcal for the contract, which would take effect in 2011. Redwood City has approved that selection, and at least five other cities are scheduled to vote on it in the next month.

San Jose-based consultant Richard Gertman, the principal for Environmental Planning Consultants who conducted the review, focused on how the four proposals from Norcal, Allied, BEST and Republic Services were scored.

He said the six people on the evaluation committee rated the proposals independently and fairly, and ultimately ranked them in the same order, with Norcal first, BEST second, Allied third and Republic fourth.

Gertman also looked at the proposed costs in bids from Allied and Norcal. Allied questioned why it wasn't selected when its bid was the lowest -- $1.3 million less than Norcal's -- but Gertman said committee members considered Allied's estimate unreasonable and their cost analysis was "not subject to bias of any kind."

Patterson kicked off the review after San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill wrote a letter Aug. 28 sharply criticizing the authority's executive director, Kevin McCarthy. Hill said a letter McCarthy wrote to the authority's member agencies called into question the transparency and fairness of the process.

McCarthy was part of the six-member committee that evaluated the collection bids, along with two other authority staff, an official from Monterey's waste district and two consultants.

Several other bidders said the consultant's report didn't go far enough in analyzing the process.

Steve Jones, the general manager of BEST, said the consultant also should have looked at the evaluation of BEST's cost proposal, which he believes is the most realistic and came in higher than Allied's or Norcal's.

Allied's executive director, Evan Boyd, complained that Gertman didn't have time to read through all the proposals, which are each made up of hundreds of pages of documents.

"It looks like it was a pretty superficial look at the process," Boyd said.

Shaun Bishop can be reached at sbishop@dailynewsgroup.com.