Lawyer: New Garbage Collector 'All Set and Ready to Go' in January

The attorney for Yorktown's new garbage hauler is reassuring the town that garbage will be picked up as scheduled starting on Jan. 1, 2013 despite some questions being raised. 

"We're all set and ready to go," said Jeffrey Buss, who represented Frontline Waste Management Corp. doing business as Competition Carting. 

By switching to another garbage collector, Yorktown is saving about $800,000. However, the bid award has sparked some criticism among residents and members of the town's previous provider CRP Sanitation Inc. and prompted a lawsuit.

Buss represented the garbage hauler at a town board meeting last week because of the ongoing litigation. The hauler's new chairman of the board Joseph F. Spiezio, III, and Brian Amico, who had submitted the bid on behalf of his company Competition Carting, did not attend. 

Town board members voted unanimously in October to accept the $2.49 million bid, which was the lowest out of four bids that were opened on Oct. 1. The second lowest bidder for the job at $2.98 million was Yorktown's previous garbage collector CRP Sanitation Inc. 

Buss said Amico, a Yorktown resident, sought the financial backing of Spiezio III.

"My role as the chairman of the company is to increase the efficiency, manage and bring in additional resources such as equipment, equity, manpower, and years of experience and talent," Spiezio III told Patch earlier this month.

The new garbage hauler would now operate 11 vehicles and will have 23 employees (20 of them will work to service and pick up garbage in town) – which is more than what Amico had previously estimated. 

Amico told board members back in October that he had four employees and five trucks, but needed 12 employees and eight trucks to do the job. When asked by town board members whether Amico had the finances to do the job, he said he could get the finances only after the bid was awarded to him. 

CRP Sanitation had been collecting garbage from 10,000 residential homes in Yorktown with 19 employees and 10 trucks. 

"It's going to be, we hope, a really great service that the town is going to be very proud of, really happy with," Buss said.

Yorktown's Environmental Conservation Department Recycling Coordinator Kim Angliss-Gage said she needed the new garbage hauler to submit the details over their holiday garbage pick up schedule – something, she said, that needed to have been done by now. 

"She doesn't need to worry about this from now until January," Yorktown councilman Dave Paganelli said. "This is a big responsibility and if it goes wrong, a lot of it goes on Kim [Angliss-Gage]'s shoulders."

In the worst case scenario, if garbage does not get picked up, the town has the option of renting trucks, Angliss-Gage said. She said the town has the manpower and ability to step up to the plate if needed. 

CRP Sanitation Inc., which filed a lawsuit against the town of Yorktown and the town's new garbage collector Competition Carting last month, accuses Spiezio III of using Amico to avoid any vetting process. In the lawsuit, the company also asked for the reversal and annulment of the town accepting Competition Carting and Refuse Removal Corp.'s bid for municipal waste hauling and recyclables.

"CRP was new at one point," Yorktown Supervisor Michael Grace said. "There isn’t any reason to anticipate that there’s going to be a default."

To read more about the lawsuit, click here.

To read more about the garbage bid award, click here.

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