While perhaps not being an expert in trash collection and the trash tax situation that others are, I couldn’t help notice a recurring theme with regards to the current solid waste program of the City of Toledo. This department continues to find a need to spend more.

Not that it’s unusual for a government project to require more spending. I would be hard pressed, in fact, to find any government project that required less spending. The trash situation in Toledo is quickly developing a stench that can only come from … well, trash.

We begin, of course, with the fact that citizens in Toledo pay an extra tax for trash collection and the privilege of recycling some of the waste produced. This additional fee goes to pay for the costs of not just that particular program, but any additional costs for solid waste management. (Note here I use the terms tax and fee, for like the city I choose to use the terms that suit my mood of the moment.) In fact, this tax/fee is being adjudicated by the courts to determine whether it’s even legal for the city to be collecting it. Seldom deterred by legality, the city chooses not only to continue collection of these monies, but to increase the amount collected to make up for a growing shortfall in the budget.

Add to this that those employed in the collection of waste in Toledo appear to have a rather unique contract. Not only are the jobs these workers hold apparently guaranteed; but rather than working on a strict hourly basis, these employees work on a daily route basis and are able to go home with a full day’s pay regardless of the hours worked, as long at the day’s route has been completed.

Not content with the madness already created, the city is in the process of saving even more money in trash pick up by attempting to go to a more automated system. Once again, using the concept of spending money to save it, the city has already invested considerably in a pilot program for automation that included both equipment and trash cans.

Having convinced itself of the money to be saved, the city decided to move forward with the spending required for completion of the automated pick up process.

Already in debt in many other areas, the city decided once again to save money by spending more money, this time to repair the pilot program trash cans that it recently purchased (which shouldn’t have required repair quite so soon). The city is also trying to save money through spending on the new trash truck technology required to use the automated cans that it has already purchased. Now, it appears that additional money will be saved by spending $200,000 with a firm in Ann Arbor to redesign the routes traveled to use these new trucks and cans efficiently.

Far be it from me to point out the obvious, but perhaps all of this saved money might have been better spent putting the entire process out for bid to a private firm. Privatizing trash collection, unfortunately, would not have permitted the city to save money through spending.

Privatizing would instead have turned over the costs of trucks, trash cans and route efficiencies to the company contracted to do the work. Privatizing would likewise have turned the scheduling issues of trash pickup, the compliance issues for elderly and handicapped citizens and the trash can size and number issues over to said company, with any related costs as their problem. (Rumor has it, such service could even have been provided less expensively in this way rather than by the city.) Dare I even say that the potential efficiencies of privatizing trash collection might even have allowed the city to do without the legally questionable tax/fee system used before the courts have to rule on the subject?

I fear that the city is too far into its pickup route to turn back now. Regardless of the ludicrous contract with its employees, the questionable performance of the trash cans already chosen and the regular discovery of additional spending required to move this project forward (money that the city is in rather short supply of these days and which might be better spent locally than with out-of-state firms), Toledo will continue forward with its odorous plan to save money on trash by spending.

Tim Higgins blogs at http://justblowingsmoke.blogspot.com/.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Just Blowing SMoke, Opinion.
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