JACKSON, Miss.—Jackson residents no longer have anyone to pick up trash from their homes as of Monday after the City Council voted down a six-year contract with Richard’s Disposal on Saturday.
Mayor Chowke A. Lumumba said another request-for-proposal process would take about 50 days to complete in a statement Saturday, which risks leaving capital city residents with no garbage pickup for weeks. In the meantime, the City faces a fine of $25,000 a day from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality for not picking up garbage.
The latest garbage crisis is part of a long-running dispute between the mayor and the city council, which prompted a series of emergency garbage disposal contracts in the capital city, starting for six months with Waste Management in October 2021; Richard’s Disposal began providing garbage pickup in an emergency contract in April 2022, following the council’s previous repeated rejections of contracts Lumumba presented after two earlier rounds of RFP processes.
The mayor presented the council with FCC Environmental Services in 2021 and Richard’s Disposal in 2022 as bid winners, but the council refused both efforts. The mayor has repeatedly accused the council of contract steering in favor of Waste Management, which held the contract with the City for decades before the current impasse.
Richard’s Disposal, which is Louisiana-based and Black-owned, has picked up trash in the city on an emergency basis since April 1, 2022, over the city council’s objection. The mayor vetoed that objection, but the Mississippi Supreme Court declared the mayor could not veto a council’s negative vote in a March 9 ruling.
‘This Is What Contract Steering Looks Like’
On Saturday, Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley, Ward 6 Councilman Aaron Banks, and Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Fooote voted against adopting a six-year contract with Richard’s Disposal, which the mayor said he favors because it comes with the lowest cost to the City.
Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes, who abstained from voting, wanted to swap the name of Richard’s Disposal for Waste Management as an amendment to the mayor’s proposal over the protests of City Attorney Catoria Martin, who said only the