City officials were sent scrambling when the private company that picks up the city’s garage went out of business without warning on Friday, Nov. 7. Mayor David Roberts declared a health emergency due to the bankruptcy of HC Container and P&N/SJG Recycling Specialists of North Bergen and was forced to use a team of 16 employees from the Department of Environmental Services to collect trash.
According to Roberts, there was no lapse in garbage collection service. “We literally only had four hours notice,” said Roberts. “We immediately declared an emergency, developed a plan of action, and although there were plenty of challenges, the city workers pulled together and did and extraordinary job.”
Hoboken provides citywide garbage collection four days a week and limited, zoned collection two days a week. The city was paying HC Container $73,500 per month to collect garbage. In addition to Hoboken, HC Containers, owned by brothers Patrick and Ronald Stamato, served the Hudson County communities of Union City, West New York, Guttenberg, Bayonne and Secaucus. They also did work outside the county.
The closing of the company has left 300 jobless.
“The city is maintaining normal service levels, and we do not expect a measurable decrease in the ability to provide its residents full service levels,” said Roberts. “We have a team of workers in place maintaining six-day-a-week collection as we solicit bidders for a new collection contract.”
Roberts added that the city is now in the process of hiring additional workers, and plans use in-house employees to collect garage on a trial basis for at least the next 30 days and as long as the next three months.
“We’re going to see what kind of stress collecting the garbage ourselves puts on our manpower,” said Roberts. According to City Business Administrator Robert Drasheff, using city workers for collection will cost approximately $69,000 per month, a savings of nearly $6,000 per month over the private contractor.
Roberts said it takes city workers about 14 hours to do the work HC Containers did in eight. The reason for the longer times was that the city only owns 25-foot trucks while HC Containers had 31-foot trucks. The smaller trucks mean more trips during the night to the dump. Also, said Drasheff, the city has not used its own workers to collect trash since the early 1980s, so it’s going to take some time to become more efficient.
“We believe as the workers become more experienced, and if we can obtain access to additional equipment, we can do the job in less than 10 hours a night,” said Drasheff.
Roberts added that he will reach out to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for additional equipment, as well as ask the bankruptcy court to allow the city to use HC Container’s garbage collection equipment.
Importance of self-sufficiency
Roberts also said Monday that being able to use city workers will give the city leverage in negotiating a new contract. According to Drasheff, one company told the city it would do the job on and emergency-basis for $95,000 a month, a steep markup from HC Containers’ monthly rate.
The public contracts law also allows municipalities to assign contracts without competitive bidding in emergency situations, which this qualifies as, said Drasheff. But because Hoboken can provide the service in-house, it is not forced to accept an unreasonably high contract.
“Some other communities might be forced to pay greatly inflated rates because they have no other choice,” said Drasheff. “But because we can use city workers for the time being, we have the luxury of taking our time to find the best company that will do job for the best price.”
Recently cited
In October, a Hudson County Superior Court judge ruled that P&N/SJG Recycling Specialists had to remain closed. They were ordered to stop collecting garbage and recyclables until the judge saw a “reliable backup plan” for the removal of existing trash on the site of the North Bergen property. They were accused of picking up more trash than ordinances allowed.
On Oct. 10, P&N/SJG Recycling Specialists agreed to stop accepting new trash until they remove the existing piles that have caused numerous headaches to North Bergen residents including foul odors, standing water, massive dust, rodents, and insects.
The judge told the Stamato brothers that there was no excuse for having such a backlog of trash for so long and not having a reliable plan to clear the tipping floor of the facility every single day to prevent such a gigantic backlog.
Two days after the last court hearing, a fire broke out that caused significant damage to the facility. Fire officials have determined that the source of the fire was caused by sparks coming from a faulty conveyor belt.
The Hudson Regional Health Commission sued the Stamato brothers’ company in September, alleging that it failed to remove waste and clean the floors within the required 24-hour period, exceeded capacity limits, and improperly allowed waste, litter, and dust to accumulate on its property.