AAA Carting accuses Putnam town of manipulating trash bid

AAA Carting and Rubbish Removal claims that town officials in Patterson illegally revised a competitor”™s offer to haul trash, making it the lowest bid for a five-year contract.

AAA Carting sued the Putnam County town and the competitor, Suburban Carting of Briarcliff Manor, April 1 in Westchester Supreme Court.

“The determination made by the town that AAA Carting was not the lowest responsible bid is without merit and smacks of an improper purpose,” AAA Carting claims.

Patterson has denied acting improperly.

“The town was within its right to seek clarification on a typographical error in the (Suburban) bid,” Patterson”™s attorney, Donald M. Rossi, stated in a Feb. 3 letter to AAA Carting”™s attorneys.

AAA Carting of Cortlandt Manor held the trash hauling contract from 2016 to this past February. Last fall, Patterson solicited bids for a new five-year contract for the Putnam Lake District beginning Feb. 22.

Four sealed bids were opened on Dec. 23. AAA Carting was the apparent low bidder at about $2.5 million, according to the lawsuit; followed by Oak Ridge, $3.3 million; City Carting, $7.3 million; and Suburban Carting, of Briarcliff Manor, $12.1 million.

After the bids were opened, Town Supervisor Richard Williams Sr. called Suburban Carting “to ensure that there was no error,” according to Rossi”™s letter. Suburban purportedly told Williams that it had mistakenly submitted five-year totals instead of annual totals.

The town then allegedly converted the five-year-totals to annual numbers, lowering the total bid to about $2.4 million, or $78,683 less than AAA Carting’s bid.

Before the town board met on Dec. 29 to award the contract to Suburban, a memo was distributed that cited performance issues by AAA Carting during its then-current five-year contract.

“The timing of the memorandum raises the specter of animus and impropriety in the selection of the winner,” AAA Carting claims. “Moreover, given that the town never found AAA Carting non-responsible, its memorandum indicates that the town was seeking to justify its manipulation of the bid numbers.”

The town did not reinterpret Suburban”™s bid, according to Rossi”™s letter. The bid instructions had reserved the town”™s right to waive irregularities and seek clarifications, “for the purpose of assuring a full and complete understanding of a bidder”™s purpose.”

An appellate court ruling, the letter states, allows for correcting typographical and mathematical errors.

AAA Carting contends that state law does not allow mistakes or errors in bids to be changed. The sole remedy for a bid mistake is to withdraw the bid.

AAA Carting”™s attorneys, Nicholas Caputo and Michael A. Eisenberg, are asking the court to annul the Suburban contract and award it to their client.