Sunday, July 21, 1996
Sunday, July 21, 1996
By Robin Fornoff
Detroit Journal Staff Writer
Not since Warren's last mayor was smeared by scandal and a federal investigation has a garbage hauling contract raised such a stink.
First, there was a low bidder Mayor Mark Steenbergh didn't like. So he renegotiated sealed bids.
When the new low bidder turned out to be a friend and big-money contributor to Steenbergh, outraged city council members tried to give the multimillion dollar deal to their favorite contractor and campaign contributor.
And when no one wound up with a contract, the owners of both firms stormed out of a raucous city council meeting, rolled up their sleeves and started slugging it out on the city hall lawn.
Hardly the sort of decorum one might expect in Michigan's third-largest city. But, then, this is Warren, where, as attorney and veteran Councilman Chuck Busse observes, "politics is a contact sport."
"It really is kind of an embarrassment," said Councilman George Dimas, who added it's anyone's guess what will happen Tuesday when the council meets to try to award the contract and end months of fighting.
The competition has apparently narrowed to two firms. Steenbergh's favorite is Pine Tree Acres, until now a landfill operation in rural northern Macomb County run by Anthony Volpe.
Volpe is a longtime supporter of Steenbergh, who took office last year on a pledge to end the kind of scandal blown up by former Mayor Ronald Bonkowski's steering of a $14-million, five-year garbage contract to a pal.
Bonkowski's friend happened to be a business partner of Anthony Soave, the multimillionaire Michigan garbage magnate who owns City Management and myriad other trash firms. The deal wound up under federal scrutiny after John Pree, an admitted organized crime hit man, testified that the whole thing was set up by reputed Detroit mob figures friendly with Soave.
No charges ever came from the probe. But the contract had Warren paying almost double the garbage fees most other cites in the county were paying.
Now it turns out reform Mayor Steenbergh's pick, Volpe, is also a business associate of Soave. And many city council members who barely survived the last scandal find Volpe's connection to Soave intolerable.
The council majority prefers Standard Disposal, which has been blamed for making children sick at its operations near Hoover and Topfer streets on the city's south side.
Standard Disposal is an unlicensed trash-transfer facility operating within yards' distance of Thompson Elementary School. The city and state have tried and failed repeatedly to shut the operation down, but its owner, Gus Campo, holds an iron-clad appeals court decision that permits it to operate.
The council and mayor had agreed to a compromise on the garbage contract. All firms were asked to submit new sealed bids to be opened at a special meeting last week. The council agreed the low bidder in that round would get the contract.
But the bids were never opened because the council majority refused to approve the agenda. The fight on the lawn followed immediately.
Dimas called it "unbelievable" that anyone on the council could support Standard Disposal. "The neighbors out there are just in a rage," said Dimas. "We had a chorus line of mothers, children, teachers and school administrators here last fall begging, pleading with us to do anything to shut it down."
Indeed, at Dimas' suggestion, the same council voted unanimously last year to take any steps necessary to shut down Standard Disposal.
Busse, one of the majority of six who had supported Standard Disposal, said Campo had promised to reduce operations near Thompson Elementary 80 to 90 percent if he got the contract to haul the city's garbage.
"The contract would be contingent on his living up to that bargain," said Busse. The agreement could be enforced by making Campo turn over records of garbage intake for the last three years, Busse contended.
Steenbergh went on vacation right before the last council meeting. His representative Marilyn Donlin said, in all the posturing and dealing, the cost to Warren taxpayers of hauling garbage out of the city has been slashed by at least half.
The bids all have fallen to around $7 million, to be paid over five years, compared to the $14 million contract under Bonkowski.
Even so, at least until Tuesday, the latest stack of sealed bids remains locked in a special police evidence safe alongside piles of drugs, guns and money confiscated by cops when they aren't busy separating grappling garbagemen.
"It's all so juvenile," said Donlin.
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