GarbageGate rolls on.
A red-faced St. Johns County Board of Commissioners terminated its contract with waste removal company FCC Environmental Tuesday just three weeks after it hit the streets.
Problems were rampant from the August 1 outset, with residents complaining of repeated missed pickups and workers leaving trash strewn across their tidy neighborhoods.
The board — which awarded FCC a $28 million waste removal contract last December by a 4-1 vote — quickly threatened to nix the deal if they didn’t clean up their act.
But collective rubbish rage only swelled as major gaps in service persisted right up until Tuesday’s board meeting.
FCC CEO Dan Brazil gingerly apologized to the panel in an 11th-hour bid to salvage the arrangement.
“We’re working tirelessly to course correct any inefficiencies we’ve found and overall provide the best services we can,” he said.
Brazil said that FCC had met 99% of its duties over the past three weeks — a claim that drew a rebuke from Commissioner Christian Whitehurst.
“I would suggest that you stop saying that,” he said. “There is a zero percent chance that you are picking up 99 percent of your obligations here in St. Johns County.”
Whitehurst said the debacle has eroded public trust in a fundamental responsibility of local government.
“Our quality of life has been diminished,” he said. “The trust in basic government service has been diminished. So we are under a great deal of strain and a great deal of pressure to fix this.”
Commissioner Krista Joseph, the lone December dissenter, told Brazil that the damage was beyond repair.
“I don’t know how you’re going to go forward,” she said. “I voted against you in the beginning. I was told that we’re going to prove you wrong. Well you’re not. I’m just shocked at how bad it is.”
Livid public speakers questioned the board’s initial endorsement of FCC, with several noting that they were the low bidders in the contract process.
“You get what you pay for,” one resident said simply.
Others recounted graphic trash traumas, from cockroaches gathering in pools of black sludge left behind by FCC trucks to rat gangs frolicking in accumulated yard waste.
Whitehurst offered a full-throated apology for the garbage gaffe, sounding a bit like a college football coach reacting to an unexpected home blowout.
“I want to accept blame for the situation we find ourselves in,” he said. “I want to accept full responsibility. Because if you don’t accept responsibility for the things you’ve done wrong, then you really have no chance to fix it.”
He then initiated a vote to junk the contract, and it passed unanimously.
The board also approved a state of emergency to broaden its ability to get existing uncollected garbage cleared by Sunday.
While FCC will be able to continue to collect trash for the next 12 months, the panel will likely pay other haulers to ease the crisis in the meantime.
Prior to the vote, a TPC Sawgrass speaker urged the board to be more communicative with residents — and longed for a single source of information in St. Johns County.
“Some people don’t look at Facebook,” she said. “Some people don’t look at Youtube. We need to be able to tell everyone in the community exactly what is going on.”
