July 11, 2011
Contact:
Chris Brook: (919) 323-3380 ext. 113
chrisbrook@southerncoalition.org
***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
Greensboro City Council To Put Forward A Third Request For Proposals For White Street Landfill
Compact timeline does not allow for due diligence
A four-person majority of the Greensboro City Council intends to put forward a new Request for Proposals (RFP) today to re-open the White Street Landfill. This new RFP requires the City Council to complete—in less than two months from now—a process that would re-open White Street.
“It’s impossible to conduct a thorough RFP process on such a compact timeline,” said Chris Brook, the staff attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice who is representing Plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the expansion of the landfill. “We urge the City Council to do what it has not done before—its due diligence.”
This is the third solid waste management RFP issued by the current City Council. The first RFP was discarded by the Council after months of consideration. The City Council abandoned their second RFP after more than six months of consideration when two Guilford County Superior Court judges ruled it failed to comply with North Carolina landfill laws.
The RFP calls for private contractors to submit proposals to re-open White Street by July 25 and then for the City Council to conclude contract negotiations by August 31. This would give the City Council only seven weeks to receive, analyze, and debate RFP submissions, conduct contract negotiations and then finally set a course for Greensboro’s future solid waste management plans.
The timeline for this most recent RFP would allow the four-person majority pushing the landfill plans to re-open White Street before they face Greensboro voters in upcoming municipal elections.
A copy of the draft Request For Proposals can be found
here or at the link below.
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The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in August, 2007 in Durham, North Carolina by a multi-disciplinary group, predominantly people of color, who believe that families and communities engaged in social justice struggles need a team of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers and media specialists to support them in their efforts to dismantle structural racism and oppression.
