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08/31/2010: "The County Council May Be Moving Toward A Decision On Solid Waste"

(Nina Rook & Elizabeth Anderson ready to present solid waste survey results to the County Council)

On Monday the County reviewed the PowerPoint results (.pdf 1399\k file) of the recent solid waste survey, (See previous story) and may have come to grips with the reality that has been facing them for years, and this time instead of looking at it and then calling for more studies, more “facts,” and more discussions, one got the sense they were close to telling the public “you can pay more, or we cut services. Which should it be?

Councilmember Howard Rosenfeld noted there were 41 pages of comments in the survey, and said the survey indicated what the council is contemplating doing is the opposite of what the survey indicates the public wants. When asked to give an example, he said the public wanted more service.



Councilmember Bob Myhr responded that lack of service is not a problem on Lopez, because the hours have not been reduced, which brought a retort from Rosenfeld, who asked Myhr “Can you wrap your mind around the whole system?

Rosenfeld -as is his style- criticized the survey, and questioned the value of it, and said there should have been a statement at the beginning that informed the public of the crisis in the solid waste program, and he again asked “How does it help us, knowing everything we have talked about doing are the things the public does not want.

There ensued a long discussion that wandered away from the “Focus On Decisions Agenda” and into long range discussions, but after Patty Miller, who will be replacing Councilmember Gene Knapp next year, took the council to task for their inability to follow a simple agenda and accomplish something, Chair Richard Fralick continued to try and focus the council on the task at hand.

As the hours passed the coalescing of ideas and facts seemed to lead to an obvious conclusion that what was needed was to determine what the true costs were to provide all the services the survey indicated the public wanted, make a decision as to the best way to fund the program, and then ask the public to vote on the question of are they willing to pay for the services, or do they prefer to reduce the services.

Leaving aside the management question, the true costs of providing the services can be determined, and Public Works Director Jon Shannon said that the complete elimination of the solid waste program by signing a contract with a solid waste contractor would solve the financial problem, since it would shift it to the end user of the program.

The Council discussed the pros and cons of a public service approach vs. a business model -or an “enterprise model” as they referred to it, but, as so often is the case, the time for discussion came to an end, however, the council will pickup the subject at their regular scheduled (8-31-10) Tuesday meeting. (Tuesday Agenda)

The one topic that did not get discussed was the question, as many have suggested, the need to authorize a true, complete, and independent audit of the entire Public Works department, to find ways to improve the department, or to put to rest once and for all the question of mismanagement of the department.