Greater Shepparton City Council has decided in a split decision to enter into a new tender process for its waste and recycling services after councillors rejected a recommendation that included ASX-listed company Cleanaway being awarded a multimillion-dollar contract over a possible 15 years.
Councillors met on Tuesday, April 11 to specifically decide on huge waste and recycling contracts said to be worth more than $75 million over 15 years.
Councillors originally considered a recommendation by council staff at their meeting on March 21.
That recommendation was to award the kerbside bin collection, handling and disposal contract to Cleanaway for an initial period of seven and a half years, with an option to extend for a further seven and a half years.
It also recommended that Western Composting be awarded the FOGO, or food organics and garden organics, processing contract for an initial seven and a half years, with an option to extend for a further seven and a half years.
That recommendation followed a regional collaborative tender process known as the ‘Resource Recovery Collective – Hume’ for waste and recycling services involving 10 councils and two alpine resorts.
However, a new process will now be started by Greater Shepparton City Council over an undetermined time period after Mayor Shane Sali used his casting vote to vote down the initial recommendation and then to support a new tender process.
“What we’ve asked now is for the CEO (Peter Harriott) to present what steps are looking like moving forward, so in some ways you could say it is back to the drawing board, because we have abandoned the current tender process, but we’ll let the CEO work with the waste team and come back to us with what the steps look like,” Cr Sali after the meeting.
“We understand, as it was highlighted (in the meeting), that our current contract is due to expire, I think in October.
“Ideally, you’d want to have it resolved before then. If not, then an extension of contract will no doubt need to be entered into, but that’s for the CEO and the operations team to work through.”
Councillors Seema Abdullah, Geoff Dobson, Dinny Adem and Sam Spinks supported the original recommendation that would have seen Cleanaway and Western Composting awarded the lucrative contracts.
They maintained that an independent process had taken into account all the relevant matters required to decide the successful tenders, including considering benefits to the local community such as local employment, the use of local suppliers, the use of local plant and social benefits.
“All of those. All of those criteria. All of those categories were included in the collaborative procurement process,” Cr Abdullah told the meeting.
Cr Abdullah said she was “appalled” by the decision to reject the recommendation and wondered what council could achieve by taking such a “cowboy” approach to tender processes.
Cr Spinks said “it’s not fair to everybody who was involved” to abandon the process.
“We asked someone to do a job for us, they did the job, they came back with an outcome and suddenly we’ve thrown our hands in the air and said, ‘Oh, hang on, maybe we wanted it done a different way’,” she said.
Cr Adem also said due consideration was given to all relevant issues.
“Considerations that the community think weren’t made, were made. Without a doubt,” he said.
“I have full confidence in that.”
Cr Dobson invoked Australian movie The Castle to get his point across.
“I think it was in the film The Castle that I first heard that term ‘in good faith’,” he said.
“All the tenderers, who tendered for this process, tendered in good faith.”
But councillors Greg James, Anthony Brophy, Ben Ladson and Cr Sali all rejected the recommendation in favour of pursuing a new process. Cr Fern Summer was an apology for the meeting.
Cr Brophy then put forward the alternative motion, saying confidentiality prevented him from publicly raising some of the concerns he had.
“As to the nature of tendering and confidentiality, we were not all privileged to see each of the tendered prices, which, in summation, forms a large component of the overall recommendation,” he said.
“Therefore, after exhaustively reading the evaluation report, the subsequent documentation and correspondence, I’m not convinced that awarding a tender based on the current report presented and tendering process applied is the best value for money nor the best outcome for the ratepayers of Greater Shepparton.”
Cr James said the action council was taking was not unusual.
“We’ve done this before with significant contracts in our region,” he said.
“I fully support the need for our council to incentivise the local economy and more importantly our many businesses within our region.”
Speaking after the meeting, Cr Sali said the significance of the decision meant it warranted further consideration.
“This is an important decision,” he said.
“It's a long-term decision as well, so I need to personally be sure that the information I’ve got in front of me I’m comfortable either supporting or not supporting it because it’s effectively a 15-year decision for our community.”