The Cypress City Council voted 4-1 to form an ad-hoc committee to study a proposal made by a waste hauling firm that wants an extension of its franchise to use the city public works yard as a transfer facility.
Following a long and somewhat heated discussion, the council voted to create an ad-hoc committee but refused to “accept the proposal in concept.”
“How can you approve the concept when you don’t even know the guts of it,” asked Mayor Pro-Tem Mariellen Yarc?
The discussion followed a presentation by Public Works Director Douglas Dancs, who presented to the council a 4-part proposal from Valley Vista Services, the company that currently owns the city’s waste hauling franchise.
Dancs said the proposal made to the city by Valley Vista has four parts, including 1) a 15-year extension to its current franchise (which ends in 2027), a proposal by Valley View to pay the city $110,000 per year for use of their public works yard, 3) Valley Vista will pay the full cost of the construction of a transfer station and 4), they will also construct a compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station on the site.
Dancs said the transfer station would allow Valley Vista to transfer garbage and recyclables from the 14 trucks used in Cypress to larger semi-trucks, thus the need for a “transfer station.”
Currently, he said, truck collecting garbage in Cypress drive directly to Brea to offload their contents and others drive directly to a recycling facility in City of Industry.
If the city allows Valley Vista to create a transfer station, the garbage trucks would then transfer their contents into covered semi-trucks, which would then carry it to its final destination.
Dancs said the contents of two garbage trucks would fit into one semi-truck.
In addition, he said Valley Vista would construct a compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station, which could be used by Valley Vista vehicles and Cypress public works vehicles, some of which are fueled with CNG.
Currently, said Dancs, the city’s CNG fleet must drive to Buena Park for fuel. Having it available inside the yard would save the city approximately $40k per year in improved efficiency.
He estimated the cost of the project at approximately $2 million, and Valley Vista needs the 15-year extension to borrow the money to make the necessary improvements.
“There’s a lot to look at there,” said Mayor Rob Johnson.
Dancs gave the city council four options to move the project forward, including 1) approving the proposal and having city manager Peter Grant negotiate terms, 2) to “approve the proposal in concept” and appoint an ad-hoc committee to negotiate, 3) simply appoint a fact finding, ad-hoc committee to explore the proposal and 4) reject the proposal altogether.
“This is an enormous decision and commitment before us and I really want the new council to be involved, this is going to be on their watch,” said council member Stacy Berry. “The timing of this is very troubling to me,” she said.
“Moving forward or putting two of us (current council) is simply wrong,” said Berry. “We should let the new council weigh in on such a huge, huge decision.”
“The reality is that any decision we make is not going to me prior to the arrival of two new council members,” said council member Paulo Morales. Quite honestly, I don’t think we’re going to be leaving any of the new council members out of the process,” he said, “even if we appoint the ad-hoc committee tonight.”
Dancs’ proposal gave the city four options, ranging from approval the proposal and allowing the city manager to negotiate to rejecting it altogether.
The other two options were thoroughly explored by the council as Council member Jon Peat repeatedly moved an option to have the council “accept the proposal in concept,” only to have it rejected.
Peat’s initial motion would have had the council approve the Valley View proposal in concept then create an ad-hoc committee of himself and Morales to negotiate the details and bring it back to the council by Dec. 7.
Morales made a substitute motion giving the ad-hoc committee until January to get back to the council.
His substitute failed, then Peat’s original motion failed 3-2 with Peat and Johnson voting for.