Remember Oakland’s BAD Garbage Contract
I oppose the City of Oakland’s $600 million ‘Bond Measure KK’ because Oakland is not capable of administering a contract wisely. The Alameda County Grand Jury found that Oakland totally mismanaged the recent $50 million garbage contract resulting in a 50% increase of our monthly garbage bill. [See 2015-2016 Grand Jury Report @ acgov.org/grandjury on p.39] The Oakland Administrative Office botched the garbage contract so badly that at the last minute it assigned the contract to California Waste Solutions, which was not capable of performing the service. Next, Oakland renegotiated the garbage contract to give back most of the collection services to the ongoing collection company, WMI. The new garbage contract costs property owners 50% more because Oakland would not accept a cheaper package deal from WMI.
Now Oakland wants $600 million of taxpayer money to dole out and manage in contracts. Oakland has proven that it cannot manage money wisely and should not be trusted with large budget until it has proven ability to manage small budgets.
Oakland leadership routinely ignores its own Ordinance, which requires competitive bids on all contracts. The leadership merely passes a Resolution to bypass the Ordinance requirement as it did with the ESA ‘Coal Study’ contract. A month ago, the Oakland Mayor waived the competitive bidding process to hire a part time $300,000/ yr transportation consultant. With the funds from this KK bond the contract spending abuse would be infinite.
Oakland’s infrastructure improvements need to be done incrementally. The taxpayer must evaluate the value received before additional tax money is supplied. Marcus Crawley mcprose@att.net
