Compactor Cost Question!

It is county commission Tuesday. That means, a run down of the agenda and highlighting a few things.

First up... Corecivic is being "fined" $2,500 for a contract violation. A judge ordered the release of an inmate and Corecivic kept her in custody for 3 full days before releasing her.

Not sure about you... but to me that seems like a much bigger deal than a $2,500 fine. Sure, it was a 4:30pm on a Friday when the facility received the judicial order, but I am pretty certain that the jail operates 24/7, so why would it take 3 days to process the release? The performance of CoreCivic has long been questioned. This will add more fuel to that.

Lease between Inverness and the County to lease space (5,089 sqft) in the Inverness Government Center. This will provide offices for the County Commissioners and staff (county attorney) as well as use of the meeting room so the commission meetings can still be held in Inverness, if they move those completely out of the court house as well.

We are doing this because we will begin to renovate the 2nd floor of the courthouse for judicial uses as part of our space needs analysis. Judges need more space. This gets them more space once we move commissioners out.

This is a 7 year lease and the cost is $30,517 per year, paid over two payments.

This started out at around $10,000 per month as a "placeholder" figure back in August. Commissioners balked at that amount and said it was a non-starter and opted out of negotiations only to bring it back a week later, although not following proper protocol.

Now it is down to $2,543.08 per month or $6.10 per sqft per year. MUCH BETTER.

But the question remains... Do we really need this?

I have asked before if commissioners need offices. I would love to know who actually goes to theirs in Inverness and how often. If I were a betting person, I would guess not very often. While we are figuring out what to do with our buildings and the hundreds of millions we need to make more space, according to the consultant, do commissioners need offices or are there other options available to them? We own public buildings in every single district. Can we carve out space for them in those?

Now, that said... Its $30k a year. We are not talking millions. In the grand scheme of things, its not much... but still if we are trying to pinch pennies to fix roads and other things, $30k here... $30k there... it adds up.

Honestly, I am good with either option, now that it is not $120k a year. That was crazy. Looking forward to the discussion.

Tana Compactor.

Never thought I would be discussing a compactor, but here we are. Why am I bringing this up? Well I noticed something when looking at the agenda for this.

It is a piggy back contract off the Florida Sheriff's Association Cooperative Purchasing Contract. Basically, FSA negotiated rates for various items, compactors among them, and counties/cities can piggyback off their prices.

Ok cool... but the agenda included no back up. It only included the quote from National Equipment Dealers for $1.5 million.

Normally with a piggyback agreement, the agenda has backup material to show the contract they are piggybacking off of.

For example, here are the attachments for the North Florida Land Trust Greenprinting.

Notice, the contract and the RFP they are piggybacking from is included.

For the compactor, also a piggyback, only the quote is included? Where is the contract or the RFP documents?

I fire off an email to staff and get notification yesterday that they are adding items to the agenda.

Ok good.. Now we have the contract we are using, but where is the RFP?

One thing to notice here... President Trump signed an executive order 14173. This basically removes preferential treatment for certain things, like gender, race, etc. This contract we are piggybacking off of appears to include some of those things in it.

How can we piggyback off a contract that includes language that is not longer allowed by a Presidential Executive Order? You got me, but here we are.

Further, I noticed something else. As you see in the quote above, we are getting charged $116,124 for the 7500 service agreement. I dug a bit to see who else bought this compactor under this contract and found the Charlotte County bought one in 2025.

Ironically, it is the exact same setup that we are buying.

But you notice something? They were charged $49,500 for that same 7500 hour service agreement.

Why are we paying $66,624 more for this than Charlotte County did in 2025. I thought maybe it was because we are about a year out from the quotes, but then, in the packet sent back out today I mentioned above, is the quote for this.

The quote was given in November 2025. The Charlotte County quote was April 2025. They did not approve it until June 2025.

So 7 months after the quote to Charlotte County, they quote us $66k more? Keep in mind this is for a service agreement, which largely consists of labor, travel, mileage and parts. No way in the world can you convince me that those costs go up 134% in 7 months.

If this is a piggyback contract, shouldn't rates be the same for everyone? That is the point of going this route rather than doing it on our own. We are getting access to prices that are available to everyone.

I will bring this up at the meeting and see if Commissioners have the same questions I do.

Lastly, I want to talk about the LDC amendment for Data Centers presented by Commissioner Kinnard.

I am happy to see some type of discussion over this as I called for it previously and at the last meeting. However, since then, I have done some research and I am not sure that we can do this and have it apply to the current pending application. It would not apply if that were to be approved based on my understanding.

I have a separate article coming talking more in depth about this, but there are several court cases that seem to indicate the county cannot legally enforce this for a pending application. Smith v. Clearwater, City of Jacksonville v. Coffield, Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority v. K.E. Morris... and others.

We will see if commissioners ask staff if this is enforceable.

My guess... commissioners will need to change the LDC and then deny the current application in March (or vice versa) for it to apply to that project in Holder. This would also ensure that whatever legislation is passed in Tallahassee also applies to that project.

That is enough for today.. See at at the meeting!