With less than two weeks to go before St. Paul’s new trash-hauling partner begins citywide collection, Mayor Melvin Carter sent a strongly worded letter to the city council on Thursday informing members they had “plunged the city into crisis” by voting to block a garbage truck dispatch center, maintenance facility and compressed natural gas station on Randolph Avenue near West Seventh Street.

“Beyond the legal obligation we have under state law to provide trash services, breach of contract would expose taxpayers to costly litigation, and interrupt trash hauling service for St. Paul households,” said the mayor, adding that he had not ruled out declaring a state of local emergency. He urged the council to call an emergency meeting.

Council President Rebecca Noecker noted on Wednesday that the city’s new trash collection partner — FCC Environmental, which is based in Spain and Texas — had always planned to begin citywide trash collection of residential routes on April 1, even without the Randolph Avenue facility in place. In fact, the company began collecting trash from multi-unit buildings on Nov. 1 using an alternative refueling location.

The city’s zoning code doesn’t directly address garbage truck dispatch facilities. The council on Wednesday voted 5-0 to support an appeal, filed by the West Seventh/Fort Road Federation, that took issue with city zoning administrator and planning commission findings that the FCC Environmental project at 560 Randolph Ave. would largely resemble a public works yard and could move forward under its existing “light industrial” zoning.

The mayor said that the location is similar to two other public facilities in St. Paul, including one that serves as a solid waste parking, office and dispatch site.

“By granting the appeal without a legal basis, the City Council is prohibiting a private company who legally purchased a property from using the site to provide essential garbage services to our city, jeopardizing our ability to provide trash services across the city after March 31 … as legally required under Minnesota state law,” reads Carter’s letter.

Since publicly announcing a new seven-year contract with FCC Environmental last June, city staff have been working in close partnership with the FCC team to establish the garbage, yard waste and bulky item collection services that will begin on April 1, the mayor wrote. FCC agreed to invest $25 million in a new St. Paul facility with more than 30 compressed natural gas-fueled collection trucks, fully electric pickup trucks for route managers and an electric box truck for pickups of appliances and bulky items like sofas.

The mayor noted that the council was supposed to serve in a quasi-judicial role on Wednesday as it reviewed the appeal of a planning commission decision to support the zoning administrator’s findings.

“They are akin to a court, bound by legal precedent,” said the mayor, who asked the council to “prioritize working with us to consider every possible option, including calling an emergency meeting of the City Council to remedy the effects of yesterday’s action.”

A call to a St. Paul manager for FCC Environmental was not returned Thursday.

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