With Coin Toss, Trash Firm Wins Contract in Ventura County

VENTURA — The garbage man had a decision to make.

Heads?

Or tails?

Heads, said Don Goodrow, who owns Hillside Rubbish of Agoura Hills.

And with that, he won a Ventura County contract to serve a new housing development in Oak Park for the next three months.

“I never thought it would come to that,” Goodrow said.

It is not every day that the Board of Supervisors flips a coin to determine who wins a contract.

But herein lies the rubbish: Goodrow’s firm and competitor Las Virgenes Disposal had submitted the same monthly $18.72-per-household bid to serve the new 300-home Regency Hills development.

Meetings between county officials and the two firms couldn’t break the tie. Ditto for requests for best and final offers.

That left the county with no better way to break a tie than the old standby: the coin toss.

“What kind of coin is appropriate?” Board Chairman John K. Flynn had to ask the county’s top civil attorney.

“A gold coin would be best,” county Counsel James McBride said, “but a quarter will do.”

That’s just fine, Flynn said.

Only he couldn’t, in good conscience, do the flip.

“I used to scold my children for tossing coins,” he said. “It’s a form of gambling.”

The job went to board Vice Chairwoman Judy Mikels, who, with no such hang-ups, let the contract decision fly and bounce across the dais.

“Heads it is,” she said.

Tuesday afternoon, Jerry Goodman, general manager of Las Virgenes Disposal, said he had no problem with how the tie was resolved.

“We just wish it was us,” Goodman said.

Asked what he would have called, Goodman said he always picks heads.

When he heard he lost on his lucky call, he had one question: “It wasn’t a two-headed coin, was it?”