Fort Smith Sanitation Department wins school district recycling contract, school elections set for spring

Despite a previous rejection, the Fort Smith Sanitation Department managed to win the contract on Fort Smith Public Schools’ trash collection and recycling services. The school board set the next annual school election date for May 22, but not without opposition.

The actions were taken Monday night (Aug. 14) at a Fort Smith Public Schools Board of Directors committee meeting.

The board accepted the recommendation of Fort Smith Schools Superintendent Dr. Doug Brubaker to accept the city’s low bid of $307,594, beating out the district’s previous provider, Altes Sanitation Services, which bid $241 higher at $307,835. Waste Management placed a distant third at $346,307.41.

The city’s previous bid of $250,000 had beaten out Altes Sanitation by $18,000, but Fort Smith attorney Joey McCutchen — speaking on behalf of Altes — argued since the city did not have a viable recycling program at the time sealed bidding closed on May 15, theirs should be disqualified from consideration. Brubaker recommended at the June 26 meeting — with Board approval — that the bidding process be deferred until the district could review its options given McCutchen’s objection.

On July 17, Brubaker told Talk Business & Politics the district would place the contract back out for bid in the next month with the intention of having a new agreement in place by Oct. 1, while Altes agreed to extend the existing contract to that date.

Altes has provided the district with sanitation services for the last six years. Altes and McCutchen’s charge — that the city was allowed to bid in spite of not having a recycling program in place — stemmed from the city’s May 1 admission it had been taking recycling to the Fort Smith Landfill since November 2016 under the guise of having a program in place.

The six-month timeframe the city admitted to turned out to be false after its former recycling center — Clarksville, Ark.-based Green Source — told Talk Business & Politics it had stopped accepting recyclables from the city in late June, extending the recycling lapse the city had admitted to by five months. Further inquiries revealed the city’s recycling center contract had lapsed Sept. 30, 2014, and Green Source — from October 2014 until the late June 2016 dissolution — had only accepted less than 9% of the city’s recycling materials, resulting in over 91% of materials being disposed of at the landfill.

Fort Smith residents were not made aware of the three-year lapse until late May 2016. At a June 20 meeting of the city’s Board of Directors, city directors approved a new contract with Third Rock Recycling, and partner company Pen Sales.

Representatives from Altes Sanitation and the city of Fort Smith were not present at Monday’s meeting. The School Board’s decision was unanimous, pushing the contract forward for a final vote at the Aug. 28 regular meeting.

Also Monday, the School Board’s decision to set annual school elections for preferential primaries will set the next annual election date at May 22. The vote was 5-2, with board members Wade Gilkey and Bill Hanesworth opposed. Gilkey said the preferential primary date as opposed to the general election date in November would discourage voter turnout.