At tomorrow’s city council meeting, there’s a vague item on the agenda regarding a $100,000 budget appropriation from the not-so-aptly-named “Emergency Fund” for another consultant. If you didn’t read the item you might not know, it’s about the garbage franchise zones that Brian Nakamura is trying to flop on us. He’s lied all the way through on this one, telling us alternately, it would get trucks off our streets, bring in fees to fix streets, that it would give us more control over the haulers so they couldn’t use “their old trucks” here, among other accusations, and finally, that the companies would have to perform “free” services, such as street sweeping and emptying the cans in our public parks.
On that last note, I’d like to point out, Park Staff used to empty the trash cans in the park. This involved one or two guys wearing appropriate clothing and gloves, lifting 33 gallon trash bags out of the stationery cans, picking up any errant trash, and tossing it all into the back of a city pick-up truck. Now we have a gi-normous WM truck trolling through the park. They come in on days when the gates are closed, so the driver must have a key to the gate, or a staffer who goes over and lets the truck in and out, I don’t know. The cans are off the road, so the driver can’t get them with the truck – I’ve seen him at 5 Mile. He has to park the truck and walk over to take the bag from the can. I’ve never seen a WM driver pick trash up off the ground, he’s just walked right by it on his way from can to can. I don’t blame them at what they get paid, they shouldn’t have to bend and stoop to pick up trash off the ground.
I’m guessing it’s cheaper to have WM do the parks because their drivers don’t get a fraction of the pay that our park workers got, and they only get the nominal worker’s comp, no benefits or pension. But, the trucks are literally “trashing” the park road, just like they trash streets all over town, and the smell of exhaust hangs in the air for a good 10 minutes after the truck has left.
As for Nakamura’s claim that people have complained there are too many trash trucks on the street, I’ve asked him for those letters, e-mails, transcripts of phone calls – all of which are part of the public record. He has never even answered those requests. I don’t believe he has any such complaints, because as soon as I came at him with that question, he started saying the new fees from the Franchise Agreement would go to fix the streets. Like the Castaways said, “Liar!” The city already gets about $20,000 a year in license fees from the haulers, and this money disappears into salaries and benefits, along with the receipts from the Gas Tax.
Another claim Nakamura made was that our haulers “dump” their old trucks here, bringing in old trucks from the bigger cities, where Nakamura claims the air quality restrictions are higher? Some people will feed you anything, don’t leave your mouth open too long. I wasn’t the only one to call BULLSHIT! here – Joe Matz, from Recology was pretty offended by these accusations, but kept a cool head in reminding us that ALL California has the same air quality and safety restrictions on any motor vehicle, and those accusations were just pulled right out of Brian Nakamura’s ass.
So now Nakamura is desperately trying to tell us that with a FA, he can “make” the haulers do extra chores, like street sweeping, park clean-ups, community clean-ups. No, we will all pay the haulers do that stuff, when we are already paying city staff to do that stuff. We pay for all of that in our property taxes, even those of us who don’t dump our backyard leaves in the street, even those of us who don’t leave trash in the park, even those of us who don’t throw garbage on the ground, but pick up the trash of others and dispose of it in our own garbage cans at home.
Please write letters to council and the newspapers rejecting this garbage franchise. It’s just a sneaky way of getting the ratepayers to pay more taxes to pay for Nakamura’s sweet pension.
Chico Taxpayers Association 