The rollout of residential curbside collection under St. Johns County’s new provider was a “catastrophic failure,” according to County Commissioner Sarah Arnold, speaking at the Aug. 6 meeting of the Board of County Commissioners.
FCC Environmental Services Florida was supposed to begin collections Aug. 1 but as of Tuesday, Aug. 6, many residents were still waiting to see their trash taken away.
“We’ve had missed pickups in neighborhoods all over the county from Julington Creek Plantation all the way down to Hastings, and everywhere in between,” said County Commissioner Christian Whitehurst during the meeting.
Some residents who did see their trash picked up complained of garbage being spilled in various places.
In response to calls from residents, the county dispatched its Road and Bridge workers to collect trash throughout the weekend of Aug. 3-4.
St. Johns County Public Works Director Greg Caldwell reported that a notice warning of default would be sent to FCC. The company would have seven days to cure the defect or the county would take action. If that seven days began Aug. 6, it would have expired Tuesday, Aug. 13, though no dates were specifically mentioned at the meeting.
In the meantime, county officials have been meeting with FCC twice daily to get answers and updates.
“They’d better get it right or we have provisions in the contract to move forward,” Caldwell said at the Aug. 6 meeting.
An FCC official, speaking at the meeting, promised, “We will fix this.”
St. Johns County reported Saturday, Aug. 10, that it was diligently working with FCC to bring their performance into compliance with the terms of the contract documents.
FCC brought in additional resources from frontline garbage truck drivers to route supervisors, operations specialists, the company president and the company CEO. County officials said operations were trending positively. Anecdotally, collection appears to have been put back on track.
The County Commission selected FCC as the top-ranked firm at its Dec. 19 meeting and approved contracting with it by a vote of 4-1, with County Commissioner Krista Joseph voting no.
FCC currently provides services to several other counties, as well as some cities, such as Palm Coast. St. Johns County has an estimated 114,000 residential homes that would be served by FCC.
The $28,265,040 contract is for a period of seven years with an option for two five-year renewals.
At the Aug. 6 meeting, Joseph proposed that the agreement with FCC be terminated and negotiations begun with the county’s former providers.
County Commissioner Henry Dean, calling the rollout “an unmitigated disaster,” put that into the form of a motion: that, should FCC fail to cure the defect within the seven-day period, staff would be directed to terminate the agreement and seek bids for a replacement.
The motion passed unanimously.
If the commission decides to move forward as stated in the motion, it would have to conduct another meeting and issue the RFP (request for proposal) to get bids.
The next scheduled meeting of the Board of County Commissioners is Tuesday, Aug. 20. No agenda item for that meeting indicates that the county will pursue this action.
