Clovis council sends recycling, organics contract back for separate residential, commercial bids after heated debate

The Clovis City Council voted 3-2 on Feb. 20 to send the city's recycling and organics collection RFP back to staff and require two separate solicitations for residential and commercial service, delaying award of a 10-year contract.

The action followed a lengthy presentation by staff and extended public comment from bidders and residents weighing cost, service assumptions and longer-term risks such as state mandates and future electrification costs. Staff's procurement review had recommended awarding the combined contract to Mid Valley Disposal, which the staff analysis showed as the lowest-cost proposer under multiple assumptions.

The decision to split the RFPs came after council members expressed concern that the original RFP implicitly let proposers set differing assumptions about the necessary level of commercial service. Staff said each proposer submitted its own assumptions about how many commercial bins and how often they would be serviced to meet state law (SB 1383) requirements; staff then applied each firm's rates to each proposer's assumptions and found Mid Valley lowest under multiple scenarios.

Scott Rudels, a city staff member involved in the procurement, told the council that each proposer was asked to estimate the commercial level of service needed to comply with SB 1383 and that, in hindsight, the city could have set a uniform placeholder service level to produce an apples-to-apples comparison. "In the end, applying Mid Valley's rates to that service is the lowest proposer," Rudels said, according to the meeting transcript.

Mid Valley owner Joseph Kalpikov told the council his company compiled detailed route-level data and proposed local operations and a Clovis office. "We are committed to having office in Clovis," Kalpikov said during public comment.

Republic Services representative Ashley Collie said Republic would be willing to negotiate a short-term extension if the council chose to reissue or split the RFPs. Republic and other proposers also urged the council to identify evaluation weights and key priorities so bidders could address them in a revised process.

Several council members said they were uncomfortable awarding a decade-long contract based primarily on price after the lengthy discussion. Councilmember (name not specified in the transcript) moved to send the RFP back to staff for two separate solicitations; the motion passed 3-2. The council directed staff to return with separate RFPs for residential and commercial services and instructed staff to negotiate an extension with the incumbent hauler, Republic Services, to cover any gap while the city reissues the procurements.

Staff warned the council that splitting the contract would require additional time and might not change the eventual outcome; the city attorney clarified the existing RFP does not clearly allow separable awards and that staff could reissue separate RFPs if council directed it. Staff also said the contract transition now planned for Aug. 1 would likely be delayed and the city would need to negotiate an extension with Republic Services.

The debate flagged several recurring concerns: how to set commercial service levels to meet SB 1383 organics-targeting thresholds, the possible effects of future Advanced Clean Fleet rules and vehicle electrification costs on refuse service market structure, and how to measure vendor performance on customer service. Several council members asked for more explicit customer-service metrics and clearer scoring criteria in any reissued RFPs.

Next steps: staff will prepare two separate RFPs (residential and commercial), negotiate with Republic Services on any contract extension needed to maintain service past July 31, and return to council with recommendations and timelines for the new solicitations.