The city’s first competitive solid waste procurement in roughly 70 years is heading toward a vote scheduled on short notice — and residents have reason to scrutinize how the bids are being weighed.

For the first time in about seven decades, Fullerton is choosing its trash hauler through open competition rather than renewing a long-standing arrangement. The city has been served by the same lineage of haulers since 1955 — MG Disposal, later Taormina, and ultimately Republic Services. That era may be ending.

The push came from Sacramento, not City Hall. Fullerton is operating under a CalRecycle corrective action plan tied to SB 1383, the state law requiring cities to divert organic waste. Noncompliance has been reported to carry penalties as high as $10,000 a day, with deadlines in July 2026 and July 2027. To get into compliance, the city issued a request for proposals (RFP) in September 2025, drew nine bids, and held interviews in January 2026.

The timing of the decision has drawn criticism. A special meeting to evaluate the proposals was placed on the calendar for 4 pm on June 30 — an afternoon slot, on short notice, that the Fullerton Observer noted appears likely to limit public turnout for a decision worth tens of millions of dollars over its life. For a contract that touches every household in the city, when and how the vote is scheduled is itself a public-interest question.

According to the evaluation, EDCO emerged as the top-scoring firm, in part because it raised the possibility of building a local terminal in Fullerton that could generate property and sales tax revenue. This raises questions as to where this facility would be. There have been allegations that Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung met with Brea’s Mayor Pro Tem Marty Siminoff, who has worked for EDCO for over 15 years, at a restaurant in Brea. This raises concerns because the Request for Proposals (RFP) specifies that there should be no contact between council members and representatives competing for the waste hauling contract.  

CR&R reportedly placed second on the strength of added services, no-cost residential billing, and has taken responsibility for its part in the damage to Fullerton roads by giving the City 2 million to go toward the road repair for two years.

Universal Waste Systems placed third on price, though evaluators flagged uneven residential and commercial rates.

The two-person Ad Hoc Committee, composed of Mayor Fred Jung and Councilmember Jamie Valencia, also added three more firms to the mix. These include the incumbent Republic Services, which has faced issues with labor and compliance, as well as Athens Services and Valley Vista Services.

The procurement is not free of political-money questions. Valley Vista, which ranked sixth, has drawn scrutiny over sizable contributions ($15,000) to the Taxpayers for Reform political action committee. Residents are entitled to ask whether campaign spending is shaping a contract that will land on every household’s bill.

The issue residents may want to watch most closely isn’t the sticker price; it’s how that price behaves over time. Public discussion of the proposals has centered on large up-front payments to the city — figures of roughly $15 million from EDCO and $10 million from the incumbent (Republic) have circulated — structured to be recouped over years through adjustments to the annual rate formula.

A one-time infusion can look attractive to a city under budget pressure, and could even ease the political need for a tax measure. But money recovered through a higher annual escalator is, in practical terms, a cost shifted onto ratepayers and stretched into the future. A bid that wins on today’s headline number can still turn out to be the expensive one a decade from now. That is the trade-off a “lowest cost” framing tends to obscure, and it deserves daylight before a vote, not after.

Service is the other half of the bargain

Price is only one side of the contract. Service quality is the other, and it is not abstract to residents. Some reported missed collections at multi-unit complexes, overflowing bins, and slow responses to complaints — the kind of day-to-day failures a contract focused narrowly on price can lock in for years. Enforceable service guarantees and genuine community-benefit commitments are harder to reduce to a single score than a dollar figure, but they are what residents actually live with.

What to watch

A final contract is expected before the July 1, 2027, start date. Before the council commits, residents can review the agenda packet at the city’s website, attend or submit written comments for the meeting, and file public records requests for how the proposals were scored and what each firm’s rate formula looks like over the full term.

The questions worth pressing are straightforward:

• Over the life of the contract, which bid actually costs Fullerton households the least?
• What service guarantees are enforceable, and what happens when a hauler misses them?
• And once the ink is dry, who recovers their up-front money — and how much of it comes back out of residents’ bills?

Those answers belong in public, before the vote.