Update: Council rejects Richard's Disposal contract on a 3-3-1 vote.
Will King Richard prevail over the Jackson City Council? Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba called a special meeting of the Jackson City Council this morning so he can submit a proposed contract with Richard's Disposal of New Orleans for garbage collection services. The proposal is posted below. The meeting will be live-streamed as well. Fix those mimosas and get ready for some fun.
The law requires the Council to consider only the scores of the. proposals.
Notes of meeting:
* Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote asked for a list of subcontractors. A RD representative said the contract did not require the company to state its subcontractors.
* Ward 6 Councilman Aaron Banks asked how much the contract paid for IT services. The contract will pay 6.78% for the IT services.
*.The CPI increase does not take place until July 2024. It is capped at 5%. City Attorney Tori Martin said there will be no CPI increase for the first year.
* Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley asked how many times the administration has submitted a Richard's Disposal contract to the Council for approval. Ms. Martin said three times. However, Mayor Lumumba said the Council presented the contract one of those times, which would be illegal.
* Ward 4 Councilman Bryan Grizzell said "All this is by design." "This is going to come to an end today. It's not going to be a desirable end," continued the Councilman.
* Mr. Stokes moved to limit the number of people in the room to 90 people, the stated occupancy limit. Deputy Chief Grizzell said there were 75 people in the chamber, excluding the Council. Mr. Stokes said the "doors must be shut." The Deputy Chief said the hallway monitor was not working. Mayor Lumumba said do not close the doors.
* The Ward 3 Councilman moved to remove Richard's Disposal from the contract and replace with Waste Management. Ms. Martin said courts ruled repeatedly only the Mayor can present the contract. The amendment failed 2-4-1.
* The contract failed on a 3-3-1 vote. Mr Stokes abstained from the vote as Councilmen Hartley, Foote, and Banks voted against it.
However, the Mayor only discusses price for an obvious reason.
49 comments:
The council will roll over like a dead cockroach in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
Prince Chowke will be contacting CNN/MSNBC/LSM momentarily to blame this on ____________ (fill in the blank).
There's a large segment of the citizens in Jackson who will never understand scores versus price or just about anything else concerning how Jackson has been completely screwed over by an idiot dictator.
Just passed a line of Richard trucks heading south on 55
No streaming video on the city's portal. Rat poison - get some.
Richard's contact fails again. Think this was the 4th time it has been voted on? Don't they have to move on to another contract then?
Votes Today
3 Yea (Lee, Grizzell, Lindsay)
3 Nah (Foote, Banks, Hartley)
1 abstaine (Stokes)
Don't forget, some community organizers in Eastover are setting up a temporary/emergency trash collection point across the street from the Covenant Presbyterian Church on Ridgewood Road.
Be sure to double bag everything.
What's with Stokes - he can talk the talk but not walk the walk? Abstain? Seriously. Loser.
Will Chowke's palace guard be able to keep Richards' knee-cappers at bay?
The one city service that was working, and the mayor managed to screw it up.
Stokes' positive ratings just plummeted.
I hope my neighbor Virgi knows we will never vote for her again.
This makes me smile. Yesterday 1020 passes and today the Council kicked Lumumba to the curb.
The majority of the posts on Nextdoor in Fondren/Belhaven blame the city council, not their beloved Prince Chowke. They have swallowed his kool-aid.
At least the rats are smiling.
There isn't anything remaining in Jackson for Prince Chowke to destroy.
Some of those now-unemployed hoppers will just have to go to work for Chowke's dope boys. That's diversity.
Don't y'all invest in those 96-gal carts just yet.
Selling my Eastover home and moving to Madison County was the best decision of my life.
Have a house in Belhaven and no complaints about Richard's. The hoppers really hustle. However, the mayor needs to rebid the garbage services contract in order to, as Stokes said, "follow the law". And Virgi is clueless.
Madison County is going from red to purple. It these dang former Jacksonians voting democrats trying to make Madison County a shit hole like Jackson. You people planning to move out of Jackson please leave your old-world democrat views back in Jackson.
11:34, you know you are still in Mississippi right? You’d be much better off in Texas Tennessee or Florida.
11:29 - what do you mean "Now" will have to work for them. That's what this has been about all along - easy to distribute/swap/pick-up while driving around Jackson and stopping at every house.
I really wish those other municipalities who are tired of WM (and there are plenty, especially the bedroom communities of Jackson. Ask Phil Fisher) would have spoken up about wanting options outside of WM.
It was also stupid that council did not want to hire FCC because of one a week service, even when they were offering to clean illegal dumping sites.
Now, y'all won't have garbage service. A shame. Enjoy the Sine Die parties tonight with those people you hate.
Quit y’all’s bitching, y’all voted for your political leaders, own it.
Council asking Court to grant them the right to solicit RFPs, and expedite the ruling, because Lil Choke has shirked his duty to do so for months.
Should also ask to put little emperor in a 96 gal rolling can with fish heads, pulled by Rukia in the sun.
What the hell happened to Stokes? Did someone slip something into his pocket also?
Great job by Council President Foote - other than letting the crowd inject themselves, he handled this much better than all those fiascos a year ago when Virgi waffled, waved, and weazled through the process.
Hang in there the three plus one warriors - don't let the Mayor try to get his way only through failure of leadership. He is damn good at that, but it should not be rewarded.
Actually, the RD representative said RD did not have subcontractors.
The city attorney said the subcontractor language was standard contract language.
If they do not have subcontractors, they clearly would not have to list them!
I live in a very nice Madison subdivision. We just had another Eastover homeowner sell and move to my subdivision. P.S. the “for sale” signs in this Madison suburb do not stay up very long.
@12:33
Technically agree but mayor is a repeated, reliable subcontractor for Richard's. What is the inducement? Campaign gratuity?
@12:21 PM - BS. We have WM in Madison and they do a fantastic job; if they spill some trash they pick it up; they don't throw the carts/containers around and break them; they never, ever miss a day; they wave.
Please don’t be too hard on Kenny Stokes, his wife is in Houston Texas for medical care. Their children, who live in the Northeast part of the country, are with them.
1141 - Richards has probably provided adequate and good service to several areas of Jackson. Just as WM probably provided adequate and good service to several areas of Jackson.
I hear from some folks that Richards has provided trashy service to their neighborhoods. I hear from the Mayor that WM provided trashy service to certain neighborhoods.
I figure this depends to a large degree on who the driver of the trucks happens to be, and who the "hopper(s)" that day happen to be. Mayor put into the RFP that the vendor had to supply two hoppers on every truck - making this utility service into a jobs program. But just like WM had problems finding adequate labor that would show up and work every day, Richards has faced the same problem. Seen several Richards trucks with only one hopper, despite the claims made of full time workers, with benefits, etc etc from the Mayor about why Richards is better than WM.
Frankly - I want my garbage collection to pick up the garbage on the streets. I don't care what manner, method, number of employees, whatever the private company that is contracted with uses to get the job done. The city ought not be trying to implement social programs into a utility service - unless of course you are dealing with a city that cannot properly run a utility service as Jackson has recently proven itself to be.
d
The contract should be awarded to the 'lowest and BEST' bid. Richards scored the highest on twice a week with carts. But WM scored the highest on twice a week without carts.
The council - God bless their souls - listened to their constitutents who said they didn't want one of those damned heavy ass carts with no where to store it as part of their weekly garbage process and rejected the responses to "with carts". The Mayor refuses to budge from there because he would be forced to propose WM, who was the "lowest and best" response without carts.
Easy solution to this standoff - follow the law, Mayor. Your proposal - twice with carts was rejected just like a year ago the once a week with carts was rejected for the same reason. Constitutents were willing to pay more for twice a week service.
But - Mayor refuses. Why? For those old enough to remember, thats the $64,000 question. (And, as an aside, for those old enough to remember, that game show turned out to be a scandal due to the payoffs involved in the price awards. But, I digress.)
Mayor tried to get around state law - not once but several times. And has been rejected. What does he do now? It appears nothing. Will state have to take over again due to his failure to provide any leadership and creating a public health crisis? Will the courts step in and somehow give the Council the authority to act following his failure to do his job?
Or, can we just be a good repesentation of what it takes to turn the most radical city in America into the most Third World City in America?
Hey Jacksonites, please stop living to Flowood. We don’t want your shitty decision making coming here.
Flowood has police enforcement, running water and garbage collection.
We’d like to keep that in place.
12:40 - No offense, but in this market, they don’t really stay up anywhere very long. That’s not a knock on your neighborhood, I’m sure it’s very nice.
In the column to the right here on JJ, the Crying-Liar headline says the city council “failed” to adopt the garbage contract.
Only a biased opinion could see this as a failure. The propaganda never stops.
I'd like to thank Councilman Aaron Banks for listening to constituents like me and voting AGAINST the %$@! carts, and voting AGAINST this mayor's corruption.
For 20 years, we had reliable, affordable trash pickup from Waste Management, until their contract expired and this %!% mayor tried to shove through a disreputable out of state company (Richards) that got run out of New Orleans for poor service.
In the last year with Richards, I've had missed pickups, trash trucks dribbling out loose trash as they drive down my street, and hoppers pissing in my ditch with me standing in the yard. The lid on my trash can has been broken somehow.
Even so, I'd support Richards getting the contract *IF* they were the winning bid for 2x/week service without carts. But they weren't the winning bidder, yet the mayor keeps trying to force the council to give Richards the contract anyway. Why?
It's not hard to figure out.
When I grew up in Greenville, the city had its own garbage department. Why can’t Jackson do the same. How hard and how much education do you have to have to drive a truck on a route, pick up garbage, and transport it to a city dump?
What can this run down city do that is right? Maybe, just maybe, there might be some under the table shenanigans going on.
I'd go with price without a cart. Do you realize how enormous a 96 gallon container is? Plus, if there's an opportunity for graft in this deal it's in the carts.
Has Virgi ever voiced an independent thought?
For those considering selling and moving to Madison County, don't be like those fools from Kalifornia moving to Texas and bring your progressive/liberal "that's not how we did it in Kalifornia (Jackson)" bullshit with you.
If you haven't been part of the solution in Jackson, you are part of the problem.
I read that liberal/progressive/bleeding-heart BS on Nextdoor (Madison Co) penned by former Jackson residents.
"What's with Stokes - he can talk the talk but not walk the walk? Abstain? Seriously. Loser."
TEN-FOUR, hear hear and clap clap.
WTF is up with his abstaining? He can mouth off every week for two years about this matter but is chicken-chit to vote on it?
We're all sorry to hear his wife is hospitalized, but that has nothing whatever to do with an abstention.
His stupidity could easily have handed the mayor's family the Richards contract.
We don’t want your liberal woke bullshit in Madison! Y’all leftists voted for the progressive radical bs you’re receiving so own it! In other words, you shit your bed, woller around it!
I think Kenneth I. Stokes was sending a message by abstaining, which he knew would result in the mayor's agenda failing. I suspect the message is:
KS is not against Richard's.
KS knows Jackson citizens deserve better.
KS knows the trash needs to be picked up.
KS knows the proper protocol for awarding contracts.
KS sees the mayor has repeatedly refused to follow protocol.
KS sees that the mayor, who has zero work ethic, is clearly desperate and working extremely hard to award this contract to the losing bidder.
KS smells corruption and doesn't intend to participate, even though it would be easiest to cave in and do just that.
KS hopes the corrupt mayor will give up and do the right thing once it becomes clear the wrong thing won't happen (or pay off).
I hope KS is right, and if this goes on more than a week or two, I hope the Governor steps in -- AGAIN -- to protect Jackson citizens from their profoundly incompetent and corrupt mayor.
Just as the Governor and federal government had to do - and STILL have to do - to ensure Jacksonians have the running water they are paying for. If we were relying on this mayor, we'd still be without water, and that's a fact.
The way I see it, is IF the garbage pick up is part of the water bill that most nobody pays, then it's part of the water system problem and they can let Mr. Ted Henifin figure out who picks up the garbage, right. Maybe charge you on a "stank" factor.... the guy tossing out the random T bone pays one thing but the 200 pounds of week old crawfish heads pays a whole 'nother. It fixing to get stanky in the City with Soul, right.
Thank you to the 3 Councilmen (Foote, Hartley, and Banks) for voting against this.
We appreciate you standing up for us. I am so sorry you have to deal with this foolishness. Please don't give up. We are behind you.
Mr. Stokes, I wish you would have voted against it as well. Still praying for your wife.
This is like a bad reality show…
Hallelujah to our 4 stalwarts who have stopped Lil Choke's ultimatum for Richard's mafia for the fourth time. I dislike Richard's half-assed service. If WM is a 9 on a ten scale for quality and dependability, Richard's is a 4.
There will be 12 weeks +/- pain for all in Jackson, for hauling garbage to convenient locations. All 4 locations in Ward 1 are great for me and I will tolerate a small inconvenience for the extreme pleasure of denying Lil Choke his preferred half-assed vendor.
Wrap your stinky and damp kitchen scraps and meat/fish trays, etc, into two plastic grocery bags and close up tight before inserting into your 1.3 mil large trash bag. This will eliminate odor.
Always condense and flatten plastic and cardboard containers so your trash bag is densely packed.
Think about a non marxist mayor to support next time.
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