McBride: Trash Irregularities Abound

(I've added links to the photographs)

Matt McBride:

You are likely aware of the recent problems between the New Orleans City Council and the Sanitation Department. At the center of the dispute is an attempt to determine which houses are actually getting serviced by the city's three main garbage contractors, SDT, Metro, and Richards on a month by month basis.

A couple of weeks ago, the Sanitation Department handed over Microsoft Excel address lists from Richards and Metro to the City Council (no SDT information was submitted). Stacy Head's office compiled a memo summarizing preliminary findings after an examination of the data. It's attached, and it provides good baseline information like rates the companies charge and how many houses they were charging for at various times over the length of the contract.

I have also received the monthly house count spreadsheets for October, 2008 for both Richards and Metro, as well as the May, 2007 sheet for Metro. I spent a lot of time over the past few days cleaning the three sheets up, and then analyzing the results. They are very interesting...

Duplicates

While media accounts and and city officials have simply counted the number of rows on these sheets and considered that equal to the number of houses, I found that was false. In fact, there are thousands of duplicate addresses buried within these lists. This is found when one cleans up the addresses and sorts them properly.

The problems with duplicate addresses seem to be far more severe with the Metro contract than with the Richards one. I analyzed the lists to isolate unique addresses. Here's what I found;

Metro, May 2007, 40,110 rows, billed for 40,000, actually 38,835 unique addresses

Metro, October 2008, 45,626 rows, billed for 45,336, actually 43,592 unique addresses

Richards October 2008, 64,101 rows, billed for 63,000, actually 63,600 unique addresses (it appears they are underbilling the city, but read on...)

So if one just looks at the number of rows compared to the number of billings, it would appear the city is actually getting houses serviced free. However, when one takes into account the inflating effect of duplicate addresses on the spreadsheets, it appears the city is paying money they shouldn't.

In October, 2008, there were about 2500 duplicate addresses between the two companies, including some addresses which appeared four times. Here's the details:

Metro May 2007:

1265 duplicates (3.2% of unique addresses)

9 triplicate addresses

1 quadruplicate address (4319 Chartres, Apt B)

Metro October 2008:

2014 duplicates (4.6% of unique addresses)

18 triplicate addresses

2 quadruplicate addresses (4319 Chartres, Apt B, and 13411 Curran)

Richards October 2008:

484 duplicates (0.76% of unique addresses)

16 triplicate addresses

1 quadruplicate address (2723 Jackson)

As the City Council memo indicates, the billing rates for Metro are $18.15 a residence. Theoretically - if the city can find a way to recoup these funds - it appears the city paid an extra $23,000 in May, 2007 and an extra $36,500 in October, 2008 to Metro. Using an average of these two numbers ($29,750), that would mean an average estimated overbilling of $375,000 per year due to duplicate addresses on Metro's contract.

What is noteworthy regarding the Metro duplicates (besides the large amount of them), is that 665 addresses that only appeared once on the May, 2007 list then became duplicate addresses on the October, 2008 list. Additionally, all but six of the 1256 duplicates on the May 2007 remain as duplicates on the October 2008 list. The remaining 99 duplicates on the October 2008 list were brand new duplicates that month, when compared to the May 2007 list.

Since the city paid for 600 fewer unique addresses than Richards says they collected from in October, 2008, it seems that the problem of duplicates on the Richards contract did not affect payments. But there are other problems with the Richards contract, as detailed below.

Multiplexes

For multi-unit buildings with more than four units, the owner is required to contract with a private trash contractor rather than signing up for the city's service. Such places should not be showing up on the lists of residences serviced on these municipal contracts. But they are.

There's more of this irregularity on the Richards contract than on the Metro one, and it only appears to be a few instances. But they are obvious.

On Richards, I found the following more-than-four-unit properties getting billed in October, 2008:

418 Pelican (eight-plex)

1015 Washington (appears to be six-plex, and - oddly - owned by the same person as 418 Pelican, a William W. Benson)

3351 Kabel (what appears to be a commercial multiplex property)

3820 3rd (six-plex)

3214 Diana (nine-plex) - I've attached a picture of this place from Google StreetView with 7 Richards cans out front. If you go on Google Maps and search on this address, and then click the little guy to see it in StreetView, you'll see an 8th can against the building. All 9 units actually show up on the Richards list.

In total, there are 35 "buildings" on the Richards list apparently receiving five or more cans, though not all have five units or more like those examples above. Some are fourplexes with duplicate addresses in individual apartments. Others are legitimate, and are artifacts of odd address assignments by the city. For example, there are 16 cans shown as assigned to 1 St. John Court. But that's because all the houses in that Bayou St John cul-de-sac have the same number address, but use letters to distinguish themselves.

Temporary trailer parks

This was one of my oddest findings. I discovered that Richards is still billing for temporary trailer parks as recently as October, 2008. It is unclear if trailer parks were even allowed to receive city trash cans under the contract. However, that question seems moot, because Richards continues to bill for them on the October 2008 list, even though (I believe) all these parks were shut down months ago. The addresses are:

Trailer park at 1605 Horace and 3220 Lawrence (trailers are all gone) - Richards appears to have been double billing this place, since both addresses are at the same corner. Looking at this place on Google Maps StreetView shows it as an empty lot when the StreetView van went by (last summer I believe). I have attached a screenshot of this. In the lower right corner, you can see the even older overhead shot from Google Maps which shows the trailers when they were there.

Trailer park at 2379 Rousseau (picture attached of Richards cans in front of trailers - note Google StreetView van passed by in 2007, so this picture is a historic document - all the trailers are now gone)

Trailer park at 9018 Dixon (picture attached of Richards cans in front of trailers - note Google StreetView van passed by in 2007, so this picture is a historic document - all the trailers are now gone)

Demolished properties

In response to an order from a federal judge, on November 13th the city finally began issuing lists of properties it has demolished and for which it received FEMA reimbursements. The latest version of the list was issued on November 26th. It covers demolitions performed by the city's contractor, DRC, between December 2007 and November, 2008 and can be found here:

http://www.cityofno.com/Portals/ImminentHealthThreatDemolitionProperties/Resources/CompletedDemolitions11-25-08.pdf

This list is the most authoritative list of city-initiated demolitions, since it includes the actual date a house was demolished. I cross referenced this list against the Metro and Richards sheets for October, 2008. Here's what I found:

Metro: 67 properties with demolition dates between December 1, 2007 and October 31, 2008

Richards: 33 properties with demolition dates between December 1, 2007 and October 31, 2008

My research indicates that the rebuild rate on demolished lots is about 10 to 15 percent, meaning that the vast majority of these 100 lots are likely still empty, but the city is getting billed for trash collection at them.

I also cross referenced the Metro and Richards October 2008 lists against four other types of demolition-related lists:

a) Properties which have appeared on one of the 10 Imminent Danger of Collapse lists from September 15, 2007 until July 17, 2008. Imminent Danger of Collapse (IDC) properties are those targeted for demolition by the city because they are about to fall down, or have already fallen down.

b) Properties which have appeared on one of the 22 Imminent Health Threat lists issued by the city from March, 2007 until November 20, 2008. Imminent Health Threat (IHT) properties are those targeted by the city for demolition because they are ungutted, unsecured, have tall grass, or some combination of the three. They are not in as bad a shape as IDC properties, but they are extremely unlikely to be occupied and receiving trash service.

c) Properties which received demolition permits for anyone - private owners or the city's or Corps of Engineers' contractors - during the term of the contracts - from January 1, 2007 until October 31, 2008

d) Properties which received any demolition permits since Katrina.

Here are the results:

IDC properties

Metro - 11

Richards - 9

IHT properties:

Metro - 181

Richards - 90

Demo permits from 1/1/07 to 10/31/08:

Metro - 607; including 34 duplicates

Richards - 191; including 18 duplicates

Demo permits from 8/29/05 to 10/31/08:

Metro - 1284; including 85 duplicates

Richards - 365; including 29 duplicates

While appearance on the IDC or IHT lists, or even the existence of a demolition permit, does not necessarily guarantee that the property is gone, or unoccupied, or otherwise unsuitable for garbage collection, they are strong indicators of that unsuitability. When one adds in the estimated rebuild rate of 10-15% on demolished lots, it seems clear there seem to be very many questionable properties on both Richards' and Metro's address lists.

Conclusion

There are many irregularities in the Richards and Metro address lists provided to the City Council. While at first blush it would appear that both firms are actually underbilling the city, it would appear Metro is definitely overbilling, and Richards is borderline.

Among the irregularities are:

- thousands of duplicate addresses being counted in the billing totals,

- billing the city for apartment buildings with more than four units, commercial buildings, and non-existent trailers (even double billing a trailer park in one case)

- billing the city for properties that have been demolished, targeted for demolition by the city, determined by the city to be in imminent danger of collapse, or which have had demolition permits granted to them.

With this many irregularities, it seems the skepticism some have expressed over the contracts' cost effectiveness is justified.

Best regards,

Matt McBride

Here is a link to the helpful preliminary report from Stacy Head's office.

Is a real municipal department of sanitation out of the question? Why doesn't the city own trucks or employ a workforce? It doesn't really seem like it's been particularly cost effective to go the selfish contractor route.

Certainly one place to make a change is at the top.