Bredefeld says council’s garbage company vote was corrupt. Here’s what we found out
Tensions haven’t lifted between Garry Bredefeld and his Fresno City Council colleagues following recent accusations he made of public corruption over the approval of a no-bid contract.
The dispute kicked off after Bredefeld and others on the council butted heads Oct. 22 when he questioned the contract to Fresno-based Olympic Property Services to perform trash collection services in the city’s Chinatown.
The $143,000 contract on the Oct. 22 agenda passed with a 6-1 vote. The company with the Chinatown contract is owned by Jim Verros, a political analyst for NBC affiliate KSEE 24..
A week later, Bredefeld and some councilmembers clashed again, after the council voted to repeal the Money Back Guarantee program.
At the heart of the matter, Bredefeld says, is that what started as a $250,000 contract — an amount that originated in June — was changed by Councilmember Miguel Arias on the day it was awarded to a $143,000 contract.
Bredefeld pointed out that according to the city’s rules, projects above $143,000 must be subject to the city’s normal competitive bidding process.
Furthermore, the contract was approved even though city staffers said they could provide the same services to Chinatown at almost $110,000 cheaper than the original estimate by Olympic.
So why was a $250,000 contract slashed by $107,000 when the original contract amount clearly would have been subject to the city’s bidding process?
And is it public corruption?
Bredefeld still maintains the Oct. 22 vote by the council was corrupt. He has also alleged the council was not made aware of outside conversations between the contractor and Arias.
“The whole thing was corrupt and the Council ignored it and voted for it,” Bredefeld said in an email to The Fresno Bee.
“Let me be clear. Arias made a motion on the dais to have the contract not exceed $143,000 to avoid competitive bidding and the city manager refused to sign the contract because it was not an emergency, Verros was not a unique vendor and she knew the process was corrupt.”
City Manager Wilma Quan chose not sign a declaration that the cleanup was an emergency in Chinatown before the council voted to award it, according to city spokesperson Mark Standriff.
Was the no-bid contract legal?
Asked about the contract, City Attorney Doug Sloan highlighted a memo he sent to all of the council members saying the vote was legal, as well as a follow-up email to The Bee.
“Per the memo, a service contract $143,000 or less does not require competitive process,” Sloan said in the email. “It was legal.”
Arias has staunchly denied Bredefeld’s claims, and he defended lowering the contract amount before a council vote to make it eligible for no-bid status.
He says the Chinatown project cost was reduced from the larger amount proposed in June because that had anticipated a July start for the cleanups. The new contract starts in November, making the contract shorter. The original $250,000 amount, which Arias motioned for in June, had been approved by the council during budget talks.
He noted the contract has a six-month clause in which the city could extend the contract with Olympic or decide to bring it in-house.
Plus, Arias explained the city has been able to reduce some costs on its own, including reducing illegal dumping encouraged by piles of trash in Chinatown. For example, he said new surveillance cameras have allowed the city catch about a half-dozen of the culprits of illegal dumping of bulk items, which Arias notes is more expensive than other garbage.
“In this case the sole source (or no-bid) happened with this vendor because he’s already doing trash pickup in Chinatown,” Arias said. “He’s a garbage company uniquely qualified to do this work.”
Arias said the normal bidding process takes six months to a year to approve contracts, and it is routine for the city to ask a contractor who has experience working with the city to pick up a sole source contract.
“It’s normal for us to be in communication with private contractors and city employees at the same time,” he said. “We went back and forth with internal and external vendors and came up with the solution that’s the most expedient.”
Other council members side with Arias
Bredefeld’s stance on the issue hasn’t gained him any allies.
Councilmember Mike Karbassi said the city of Fresno is not operating during normal times amid the coronavirus.
Case in point, the Federal CARES Act coronavirus relief dollars which are being used must be spent or tied to a contract by Dec. 31 or they are forfeited. Fresno received $92.8 million.
Karbassi explained the normal bidding process takes much longer.
“There are reasons for no-bid contracts. Like COVID,” Karbassi said. “We are under the gun to spend ($92.8) million by the end of the year.”
Other members of the council have said the contract was prudent to take care of a problem in Chinatown that the City Manager’s Office had not addressed in more than a year.
Chinatown has also had an influx of homelessness during the pandemic, city leaders have said. That has led to piles of trash in the street, which draws illegal dumping and fires.
Councilmember Esmeralda Soria said she was surprised by the accusations from Bredefeld, who she noted has supported no-bid contracts.
“There was a lack of statesmanship,” Soria said. “There was a bit of hypocrisy.”
A review of meeting minutes by The Fresno Bee showed that Bredefeld has supported at least 30 no-bid contracts himself since March. He also voted to support at least two dozen purchases of equipment and other goods that were not put out to bid.
Bredefeld said he supported worthy contracts and purchases.
Those issues dealt with $329,000 for new guns for police, $7 million for food distribution and a $15 million contribution from the city for a new animal shelter, to name a few.
Bredefeld said he supported those contracts because they were “true emergencies,” unlike what the council approved last week.
“It’s apples and oranges. There are no-bid policies that are transparent,” Bredefeld said on Monday. “It’s certainly not an emergency.”
Bredefeld has also pointed to an older contract with Olympic to clean up highways that fell through, saying it’s an example that Verros’ company isn’t reputable.
Verros said he’s worked on an on-call basis to clean up illegal dumping with the city since before Bredefeld was elected in 2016. He said he planned to accept the contract to clean Chinatown at the lower rate.
“When I spoke to the council president’s office previously, I said that I was open to helping out Chinatown in whatever amount is allotted to me,” Verros said. “I said I’ll make it work.”
He said he pulled out of the highway cleanup contract because he believed the city was dragging its feet to provide information he needed so he could pay the prevailing wage to his employees.
“I didn’t feel comfortable putting my company in harm’s way because the city wrote a poor (request for proposals),” he said.
Verros said he was disappointed that Bredefeld has personally attacked him.
“This is business and politics. I understand that. It’s unfortunate that Councilmember Bredefeld has to resort to name calling,” Verros said. “I’m not the one who has voted against him. He seems to have it out for me personally. I don’t know what I’ve done.”
More on no-bid votes
Arias says Bredefeld’s history of votes for no-bid contracts shows he doesn’t have a principled problem with the process but rather a personal problem with the people on the receiving end.
The only other no-bid contract Bredefeld has voted against since the pandemic began in late March was $2 million in federal CARES Act relief to Fresno Building Healthy Communities for COVID-19 prevention education, contract tracing and other support.
Bredefeld said the nonprofit doesn’t have experience in the work, and he noted a controversial “Burn it down” tweet from Fresno BHC President Sandra Celedon, during the Minneapolis George Floyd unrest.
Money back guarantee
Arias said Bredefeld’s reaction was spurred by the council’s motion to do away with the city’s “money back guarantee” for projects in the city.
“It’s his signature project,” Arias said. “He’s upset about it.”
The Money Back Guarantee Act promised that the city will return all of its development fees to a developer if staffers fail to meet a deadline to approve a conditional use permit. The council voted 6-1 Thursday to end the program with only Bredefeld voting ”no.”
That meeting again saw Bredefeld accuse his colleagues of poor ethics, saying they tried to repeal the program with properly placing it on an agenda on Oct. 20. Because the program was part of a resolution when it was originally adopted, city staffers said, the vote had to be put formally on an agenda and was on for Thursday.
Arias and other members of the council said the policy has not worked and had unintended consequences.
Bredefeld himself on Monday agreed the policy hasn’t worked, but he argues it is because of a lack of leadership from Mayor Lee Brand’s office to change the culture of bureaucracy.
Brand said Monday he attempted to put Bredefeld’s plan in place.
“I worked with Garry to make his gimmick function realistically, but he seems to have forgotten that these problems took years to occur and they won’t be solved overnight,” Brand said. “No other city in California offers a money back guarantee — and for good reason.”
Bredefeld said the discussion about the guarantee policy was a shell game to distract from the Chinatown contract.
This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
