The Manlius town board is continuing its work on choosing its municipal trash and brush collecting contractors for next year, after having a lengthy discussion about the public contract bidding process at its Oct. 8 meeting. The town received four bidders each for both trash and brush pickup contracts, but board members felt they needed more time to sift through the details of the submitted bids and decided to hold off on a vote until their Oct. 22 meeting.

The town of Manlius has had two trash/brush districts in the town in 2004, which allowed any town residential property owner of a three family or less home — and who does not live inside any of the villages of Fayetteville, Manlius or Minoa — to use municipally-bid removal services.

For the past decade, residents have had the opportunity to opt out of the municipal service and hire a trash/brush hauler of their own choosing, but the town board in September approved a town-wide resolution to eliminate the opt out option. The new policy will take effect Jan. 1, 2015, after which all residents within the town trash and brush districts must pay the district surcharge.

In 2014, the town’s contracted trash and brush hauler is Syracuse Haulers, but in choosing the contractor for 2015-17 the town had to put out a public call for bids. Under town law, the board must examine all submitted bids and choose the lowest bidder.

“The main driver here is the same as any public works contract, which is the lowest responsible bidder,” said Town Attorney Steve Primo. “We’ve already done assessments of the two lowest bidders … there are no responsibility issues the board needs to be concerned about.”

Of the four bids received by the town for the three-year trash hauling contract, the lowest was from Dependable Disposal and the second lowest from Syracuse Haulers, said Town Supervisor Ed Theobald.

“We have good relations with our current carrier [Syracuse Haulers], who is bidding, but we need to set that aside and just do the process,” Theobald said. He added that there was a lot of “detailed information” in the four bid submissions before the town board and “there are still some questions that may need to be cleared up.”

All of the board members agreed with Theobald that many questions remained to be answered before a vote to accept bids should be taken. Councilor John Loeffler said he wanted more information on the choice between manual versus automated trash pickup; Councilor Vincent Giordano said they also needed clarifications on whether fees for a hauler’s containers were mandatory for residents or not.

Giordano also voiced concern over whether residents in the trash and brush districts know that the district fees will be mandatory starting on Jan. 1, and suggested that the town send notification letters out to district residents.

The board agreed that they all needed more time to examine the bid submissions and get questions answered before taking a vote. They decided to table the vote until their Oct. 22 meeting.

The brush pickup contract also received four bidders, of which Last Chance Recycling submitted the lowest bid, with Waste Management having the second lowest. While the board had no questions about the brush pickup details, Councilor Nicholas Marzola said he was not ready to vote and felt both contracts should be awarded at the same time. Loeffler agreed.

Theobald said that since holding off on the vote was the consensus of the board, the contracts were tabled until the board’s next meeting.

The board also discussed proposed changes to the town’s procurement policy, which included “piggybacking” on other municipal contracts and switching from the current “lowest bidder” policy to the new “best value added” standard.

According to the state comptroller’s office, “piggybacking” is an alternative to a municipality soliciting competition on its own or through cooperative purchasing arrangements. The policy allows local governments and school districts “piggyback” on contracts that have been extended to local governments and school districts by certain other governments. Use of these contracts constitutes an exception to the competitive bidding and offering requirements of the law.

The best value standard is defined by the state finance law, as “awarding contracts for services to the offerer which optimizes quality, cost and efficiency among responsive and responsible offerers.” The intent of the best value option is to allow governments the ability to purchase products and services that may not be the lowest in initial price, but due to factors such as product life or quality, may provide a cheaper long-term solution.

Town Highway Superintendent Robert Cushing said that both the best value standard and piggybacking policy are “good tools” for a municipality to use.

Primo said that, ironically, if the town currently had the best value standard in place, “We’d be looking at the trash and brush bid contracts a lot differently right now.”

For the town board to be allowed to use the best value standard, it must be approved by local law, Primo said. The board then scheduled a public hearing for proposed local law no. 4, to use best value added in procurement decisions, for 7:02 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5.

Also at the meeting, the board:

—Appointed Judith Boland as the new deputy clerk to the court at a pay rate of $14.50 per hour, working no more than 20 hours per week.

—Scheduled a public hearing on a proposed local law to add stop signs to the intersection of Peck Hill Road and South Eagle Village Road to make it a four-way stop intersection. The hearing will occur at 7:03 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5.

—Heard from Marzola that the board’s finance committee was “knee deep” in working through the town’s 2015 preliminary budget and was “making progress.”

—Town Clerk Allison Edsall reminded the public that a public hearing on the proposed budget was scheduled for 7:05 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5.

—Edsall also reminded the public that a public hearing on the town’s three fire department contracts was scheduled for 7:05 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, at the board’s regular meeting.

Jason Emerson is editor of the Eagle Bulletin. He can be reached at [email protected] or 434-8889 ext. 335.