Mayor: City Council has no say in selection process for vendor for trash pick-up. See details

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said he has yet to pick a vendor for garbage collection to present to the Jackson City Council and continued to deny claims from council members that the council has a say in the selection process.

During last week's city council meeting, Lakesha Weathers, the city's solid waste supervisor, said a recommendation for garbage collection will be made either by the end of January or the first week of February.  A panel of six in the city's Solid Waste Division reviews all vendors who respond to the RFP, then makes a recommendation to Lumumba. He will then take that recommendation to the council for final approval.

Speaking during a mayor's press conference Monday, Lumumba said he will pick the vendor the panel thinks is best for the city — something he said he has always done in previous garbage RFPs. He reiterated that his focus was on finding a vendor that would be at the lowest cost for residents.

"We've gone with Waste Management when it made sense, we went with FCC when they won and it made sense, and we were with Richard's when it made sense. Whoever comes out at the end of this RFP process as having the best price and being able to provide service for our residents, then that's who we're going to go with," the mayor said.

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Currently, the city is in a one-year emergency contract with Richard's Disposal that expires on March 31. Richard's is also suing the city, saying they were denied a long-term contract that kicked off the trash crisis in April 2023. That lawsuit is still pending.

Also during the council's meeting, Ward 6 Councilman and Council President Aaron Banks, as well as Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote and Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley, urged collaboration between the city and the council on picking a vendor. Banks, who has been highly critical of the mayor for not including the council in decisions regarding the garbage contract, polled each council member at the meeting and asked if they have had any discussion with the city on choosing a vendor. Each council member responded that they haven't.

Lumumba took Monday's press conference as a chance to respond to Banks' poll:

"It is quite interesting that the question is about their participation in this (garbage) RFP when, one, that is not the role of the council," Lumumba said. "We do hundreds of RFPs each and every year and the council never participates in an RFP because that's not their role."

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The council's role, Lumumba said, is to either approve or disapprove the contract. The council has no say in the selection process, that is the job of the mayor.

This has been the question at the forefront of the trash crisis and one that led to a lawsuit between Lumumba and the city council last year. While the mayor continues to say he is the only one with power to enter the city into contracts, other council members contend it is the job of the "governing authority," which includes the council.

"You can't be both the one who enters the contract and the one who approves the contract. That defeats the basic premise of checks and balances in our government system," the mayor said, adding that Banks comments were a misrepresentation of how the RFP process works.

The mayor also defended one of the major provisions of the current RFP, which states that any new contract could be subject to termination depending on the outcome of the lawsuit between Richard's Disposal and the city. If the provision wasn't put in place, the mayor said, then the city would be stuck paying two separate garbage contracts.

Again, council members like Banks, Foote and Hartley have been critical. They believe the provision has inhibited other vendors from bidding for fear of losing the garbage contract if Richard's wins the lawsuit.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Mayor continues search for garbage collection vendor. See his comments