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In This Issue...
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Opinions
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Garbage Collection and a Rate Increase
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Garbage Collection and a Rate Increase
by Santa Cruz County Supervisor Jan Beautz
The County Board of Supervisors is about to make a very important decision that will affect, on a weekly basis, almost all of the people who live in the unincorporated area. Between now and Feb. 28, the Board will be considering a new franchise agreement with Waste Management. Having a franchise agreement means that no one can compete with the entity that has the franchise. They are given the sole right to provide services within the area involved, which in this case is the unincorporated area of the County. People who live in cities have separate waste agreements which are different depending on the city in which they live.
In this instance, part of the reason for a franchise agreement is the recycling component of the contract. The State of California mandates that the County recycle a certain amount of its waste pickup in order to minimize environmental effects and to preserve the life of the current landfill.
Preserving the life of the landfill is an important issue for the County as well as the State, since it is very difficult to find new landfill sites and, as one might expect, no neighborhood wants a landfill in their area. So while this is somewhat of a separate topic that I won’t address here, it is a consideration as to why the County has a franchise agreement rather than letting different garbage collection businesses compete for customers.
Fair Negotiation Essential
When we do have a franchise situation and we don’t allow competition, it is important that the County negotiate a very fair agreement on behalf of taxpayers in our community. Also, these agreements go for long periods of time â€" usually eight to 10 years â€" so there’s not the opportunity to revise the agreements very often. This is another reason to be sure that a lot of thought goes into the decision for cost and service protection to customers.
The Board will be considering this issue at our meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 24, with a public hearing to begin the process.
Community meetings were held in December throughout the County to discuss this issue; however, probably because of the fact that the meetings were held right before the holidays, input was minimal as to how people felt about this proposal.
If you object to the proposal outlined below, now is the time to let the Board know. Oftentimes people wait to object until they get a new bill or a new contract, and then are unhappy with the situation, but it is too late since the agreement has already been signed. This agreement will be in place for a long time, so it is important that if people feel they have substantive issues with the proposal under consideration, they need to let their County Supervisor know.
Rates Set to Significantly Increase
Probably the biggest concern that most people will have regards the big increase in rates. Most of the categories within the agreement will go up by an average of about 30 percent. An additional part of this agreement will also be an annual built-in inflation-based adjustment, which will most likely be based on the Consumer Price Index.
The letter from the Public Works Department on our agenda for Jan. 24 states, “The attached rate comparison (Attachment 5) clearly shows that the current rates in our area are far below comparable service rates across the entire Bay Area and Central Coast and is indicative of the under-adjustment that has occurred over the last eight years of the current agreement.”
Personally, I am not particularly impressed with comparing contracts in other areas because all that happens is that we end up competing at the highest cost level rather than negotiating a better deal for our own customers.
Our current agreement, which was the result of a Request for Proposals that produced bids from different companies rather than just negotiating with the current provider, produced excellent rate costs for residents of our county. This proposed agreement, which was the result of negotiations and not competitive bidding, seems to be much less so.
There are, however, also enhancements to the contact â€" services that are new which would be offered under the new contract but which aren’t currently offered. One of these would include a new 10-gallon refuse collection bin (which is a smaller bin than is currently offered). Although it really doesn’t create much of a price break, it does provide a smaller bin for minimum waste generators, seniors and others living in residences with limited storage space for the larger carts in use for standard services.
Other changes are increased availability of home compost and worm compost bins, expanded collection at County facilities, new collection service options for private roads, increased collection services in rural areas, and unlimited recycling for schools. (While schools currently have to pay a fee to recycle, under the terms of the proposed agreement their recycling would now be free).
In addition, increased recycling for commercial and multi-family customers and a single container for large volume commercial and multi-family recycling would be available. Other new services would provide residential recycling collection of film plastic as well as discounted bulky goods pickup during Clean-up Week.
Do You Care?
How much do you care about these increased services? In your opinion, do they, at least to some extent, make up for the proposed increase in fees? As mentioned before, this agreement will last a long time. The proposed length is ten years, and we would be locked into this service structure and this fee schedule for 10 years. It is therefore important, if this is a significant issue to you, to let the Board hear from you now.
In order to get more information to the public, and since the neighborhood meetings were not well attended, Public Works will be mailing an informational newsletter to all Waste Management customers in the unincorporated area following the public hearing on Jan. 24. This newsletter will provide information on the renewal process, the proposed rate increases, and changes in service currently under consideration. Please read this newsletter carefully and call either my office or Public Works if you have any questions or concerns. In addition, please try and attend public hearings on this matter if you are interested in knowing more.
My phone number is 831-454-2200 and my e-mail address is jan.beautz@co.santa-cruz. ca.us. If you want to reach Public Works, their phone number is 831-454-2160 or you can address e-mail to Public Works at dpw023@co.santa-cruz.ca.us. You can also get more information from the County’s website at www.co.santa-cruz.ca.us, and then select the Public Works Department.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
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