Last night on the agenda the council discussed our city trash collection contract including the recycling service provided by IESI. For the last year our recycling service has been paid for with a grant. The cost that the grant covered was $3.15 per household per month for recycling pickup one time per week. The council approved temporary funding by the city last night to cover that cost for the citizens until November at a cost of just over $15,000 while we work out what the contract will be for the next year with IESI.
There are several options to looks at, but the first two presented suggested that the city take over the billing process. We currently pay $12.71 per month for twice-weekly trash pickup and one time per week recycling. Now that the grant has ended our total cost would be $15.86 ($12.71 + $3.15). The new rate offered by IESI with the city doing the billing would be $14.50 (12.50 trash + $2.00 recycling). This is supposed to be a savings for the customer and at the surface it appears to be. $1.36, actually.
Before I get into why I do not support this know that the council voted to table this discussion until next month when our city staff can provide a little more detail on our internal expenses to take over billing for our trash and recycling service.
My first impression of this arrangement is government getting into something that it doesn't need to be involved with. I just don't see the benefit. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that if a poll were taken and you were asked if you would like to see your government take on another task to save you $1.36 per month you'd say "no thanks". I prefer having the private sector provide as much service as possible. Lets look at the other side of that "savings" though. The city can't perform this task for free and it's unlikely that it can perform the task for $1.36 per customer per month when you consider the supplies, printing, postage, etc. So where will the city get the money to pay for all that? From our taxes, of course. We wouldn't have to raise taxes to do this, but why spend any tax money on this when we don't have to? To "save" us all $1.36 per month? Unless someone comes up with a groundbreaking plan to do this for free I'll be voting "no" on this one. The only other thing that could make me vote yes would be an awful lot of calls and emails from Joshua citizens saying they want to grow the government by "saving" $1.36. Let me know.
One more thing...we didn't get around to talking about another proposal last night in the meeting, but we can all save some money (and keep the city out of the billing business) by going down to just one trash collection per week. Personally this would be fine with me. My household has reduced out trash by about one bag per week since we started recycling so one pickup would be fine with me and that would equal some actual savings. I don't have that cost for you yet though, sorry. IESI did mention that the single pickup day would be Wednesday for trash and recycling and I'd rather it be Monday or Tuesday at the latest since a lot of trash (at least at my house) is generated over the weekend and I'd rather not have it sitting around until Wednesday.
Let me know what you think.
A.J.
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