Fellow residents of Lexington,
After a recent discussion with some of my neighbors regarding our current garbage “situation”, I became a little concerned. We live in a neighborhood that is NOT serviced by the City of Lexington. We have our choice of garbage collection companies from which to choose. While some of you may find this topic unimportant, it has become a hot topic on our street. Some neighbors are petitioning for City service while others would like things to remain the same. However, while doing my due diligence, I have discovered a few things I found a bit startling.
1) Waste Management is budgeted to cost the city for the 2010-2011 a year $23,028,030.That’s just this year. We are talking about the possibility of spending about 100 million dollars over the next 5 years on garbage.
2) Once you go City, you can NEVER go back. In the City’s pamphlet entitled, “Petition Process for Urban Service”, it is clear they are in competition for service. However, whether you are happy or not with quality of service or the cost of service, you do not have the option to switch back to a private company. This was set in place back in 1970, when the city and county merged. While this may have been done with best intentions 40 years ago, times change. Would anyone sign a contract with your grocery store to shop there for life? What about a lifelong contract with your cell phone provider? I can see that they might like it, but would you? Do you? Currently, some of you are already in a lifelong relationship with the City of Lexington.
There are parts of Lexington that are not currently serviced by the City Garbage. In order to change that, the street must get 51% of its residents to sign a petition. Once that is achieved, the voting process begins. The city sends out voting cards to the residents. However, if you have 20 houses on your street and only 5 send the cards back with yes and one person sends it in with a no, the yes’s win. The city votes to annex your street. The rate is set via your property value and added onto your property taxes. What this means is that we all get the same service, yet we don’t all pay the same amount. In addition, they add a $4.50 charge onto your sewer bill. The private garbage companies are no longer allowed to compete. The street does not get a chance to pull together to get companies to compete for better service or better price. This could leave the door open for other problems. In a recent article, “Yonkers’s Garbage Problems Pile Up” (http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/07/15/yonkerss-garbage-problems-pile-up/ ), you can read about possible problems.
In my opinion, this 40 year old ordinance needs to be changed. I know we all love this area for its services, but if we have private companies that can compete for our business and it reduces the overall costs to the city, is that not what we should do? It just does not make sense to have the city in the trash business anymore. They say they make money on the recycling side of the business; however, on the garbage side they say. “It’s public works. It’s not a profit center”… a.k.a. a money pit. The only way the city can increase service is to spend more of our tax money. By allowing true competition, quality of service will INCREASE. And if it doesn’t, then you would be able to change it.
It’s irrelevant if I like my current service. What IS important is that we have the option to reduce costs by allowing companies to compete for our business. The city’s stance is that it’s worried about private companies running a monopoly. If they are worried about that then why do they monopolize all new subdivisions in the city of Lexington? It is just a matter of time before the city will service 100% of the city. But we have other companies that we can use, so let’s use them. By choosing private companies, we will be helping reduce the cities costs and creating real jobs. These jobs created by private companies generate REAL tax dollars, not recycled government tax dollars.
I’m unsure why the city says this cannot be changed. There must be a way to amend the city charter to fix this. We have no idea what the next 40 years will bring but we can start with reducing our cities costs and fixing/upgrading other services that are not privatized for the better of the city.
Politicians say no one ever offers up any fresh ideas… well here’s one. Have the city maintain the rights to recycling. (I am told it does pay for itself and that is good.) Then allow people the right to vote for city service or private once a year, per neighborhood. This would give businesses the chance to expand for increased customers and the city a chance to wind down its service down. If it is not working for a neighborhood, they always have the option to vote city service back. Extra city trucks can be sold as they come up to private companies as part of the deal. As people begin to pick private service, the reduction of costs and burden will begin.
Bill Polyniak
Lexington, KY
