No uproar over trash contract
By Kevin Kelley
Westlake
Published Aug. 8, 2007

When City Council voted in July 2002 to privatize the city’s trash collection, the decision caused quite a controversy.

Dozens of residents attended council meetings related to the vote, and public comment on the issue became heated at times.

Opponents of the privatization collected signatures to put a charter amendment on the ballot that would have decreed that the city’s service department rather than a private company was responsible for trash collection.

The issue even went before the Ohio Supreme Court when privatization opponents and then Law Director David Harbarger disagreed on how many signatures were required to put the issue before voters.

The court ordered the issue on the ballot. However, in November 2002 voters rejected the proposed amendment 6,233 to 4,182, allowing the city’s contract with Browning-Ferris Industries, or BFI, to continue.

BFI actually began picking up Westlake trash on Aug. 1, 2002. Westlake Service Director Don Glauner remembers that day well, because it’s the day he took over as chief of the service department.

Out of the 14 city employees assigned to collect garbage, only four objected to the privatization, Glauner said.

“Our guys didn’t even want the fight,” he said.

Before the privatization took effect, the city gave nine service department employees buyouts, Glauner said. But no one lost his job because of the BFI contract, he said. Some service workers were reassigned to forestry and sewer jobs.

In 2002, privatization opponents, who have opposed the administration of Mayor Dennis Clough on other issues, expressed concerns about the safety of bringing in outside contractors to the community.

But this summer, when a new contract with BFI (for three years with options for extending it another two years) was approved by council, barely a peep was heard.

Glauner noted that a November 2006 random-sample telephone poll of residents conducted by the Huron-based Impact Group stated that 90 percent rated the outsourced rubbish collection as either excellent or good.

“That’s pretty good,” Glauner said.

In 2002, Clough projected that outsourcing trash collection would save the city $500,000 each year, and Glauner said he believes those projections have been met.

Glauner said privatizing trash collection had several benefits over the past five years. First, the city no longer has to maintain a fleet of garbage trucks, he said. Westlake sold two trucks to Cleveland Heights and kept three for brush pickup. Secondly, the city does not have to haul trash to a landfill in Lorain County, thus avoiding wear and tear on its vehicles. The city can utilize its manpower for infrastructure maintenance and repair, Glauner added.

In addition to BFI, which is owned by Allied Waste, Republic Waste and J and J Refuse of Dover, Ohio, bid for the Westlake contract.

The first year of the BFI contract is worth $1.93 million. It includes an option, worth $24,996 the first year, to pick up garbage for the school district at city expense.

“We’re saving the schools $24,000 by picking up their garbage in our contract,” Glauner said.

At a recent council meeting, Clough said the city took this option because the school district had already set its budget for the coming year.

Ward 1 Councilman Ed Hack suggested that the city look to drop this option in the future and instead use roughly the same amount of money to maintain athletic fields on district property. The question of which entity should have responsibility for the upkeep of such fields has been a source of controversy in recent years.

Glauner said that the city could negotiate the school pickup option out of the contract after one year or the contract could be canceled an renegotiated.

When asked to comment on the city possibly ending school trash pickup, Westlake Board of Education President Renee D’Ettorre Wargo said “Given the way things are going, I’m not surprised. It’s unfortunate but not surprising.”

The city and school board are deadlocked on the sale of 42 acres of district land to the city for recreational use.

Glauner said Westlake is the only city in the region that picks up trash for the public school district at no cost. The closest exception is Rocky River, he said, where the schools haul their trash to the city, and the city hauls it to BFI for disposal.

The new BFI contract went into effect Aug. 1. The contract is based on a fee of $14.29 per residential unit. That’s up from a rate of $9.92 five years ago. Under the current contract, rates go up every year, to $16.40 during the optional fifth year.

The increases reflect the higher prices of fuel in recent years, Glauner said.

The city’s recycling contract is also with BFI. However, BFI is no longer recycling glass but has begun recycling magazines. The problem with glass, Glauner said, is that 80 percent of the glass was broken by the time it arrived at the recycling center. Glass bottles and jars should now be placed in the regular rubbish.