Jan. 5, 2016: The Sammamish City Council awarded the 7 1/2 refuse, recycling and yard waste contract to Republic Services.

The Council rejected a final plea by rival Waste Management (WM), which argued its bid is more than $6m lower over the life of the contract than the Republic bid.

The Council made the decision after an executive session, which discussed a lawsuit filed by WM over the staff recommendation to award the contract to Republic and to disqualify the WM bid as “non-responsive” on technical reasons. The staff analysis also concluded WM had undervalued its bid by a net of $183,000, resulting in a final price that was marginally higher than Republic.

A couple of residents took advantage of the Public Comment session to complain about WM services. WM serves the north end of Sammamish, while Republic serves southern Sammamish. No public complaints were voiced about Republic.

Staff detailed why it concluded WM’s bid was non-responsive and how it came to the conclusion that the WM bid was higher than Republic’s. WM altered the bid form in violation of instructions in the bid, staff said. This allowed WM to bid a price that appeared to be substantially lower than Republic’s bid, but staff said that when the prices were recalculated in accordance with the instructions, WM’s bid was slightly higher than Republic.

But because WM didn’t follow the forms correctly, staff said, the bid was deemed non-responsive.

Council members agreed and said because of the changes, the two bids weren’t apples-to-apples comparisons.

They voted 7-0 to give the contract to Republic.