As promised, or at least heavily implied, here’s an update on the local government actions regarding centralizing trash service to the township and granting a local monopoly.
I went to the public supervisors meeting Monday night. If you are wondering why I didn’t write this yesterday, well, the meeting was well over three hours long. I left my house at about 6:45 and returned home at nearly 11, wishing I had either dialed in via Zoom or at least bought a sandwich before hand. Late night and busy day at work after means I was in no place for it.
At the end of the over three hour grind comments were opened up for citizens to bring up things. Surprisingly, there wasn’t just me remaining… the meeting had started with maybe twenty to thirty odd citizens and slowly attrition wore it down to about eight of us hardy souls who really wanted to know about trash collection. Warmed my heart a bit.
So the news is a bit better and yet a good bit worse than I had expected. Key highlights are:
There has been more than one bid entered for the monopoly. Although Co A. did bid, apparently Co B. and a third Co C. also got a bid in under the wire. Apparently the initial report went out before that happened? In any case, there are at least two other options. (Good news, everyone!)
A fair few people, to wit, those who stuck around for over three hours to say so, don’t want centralized service provision. The supervisors, however, very much do. (Not so good news.)
The supervisors are very keen to get this done in a hurry, and don’t really want to talk about it. They plan to choose a bid in the mid September meeting, and do not want to hear comments until then. (Hmmm quite bad.)
Now, on the face of it, this is a step up from where we were Monday afternoon. At least we have other bids, so Co A., whose incompetence is the problem centralizing trash collection is supposed to solve, won’t likely be company chosen. Not that the supervisors would commit to that when asked directly, but… ok.
However, those points 2 and 3 are disturbing. Firstly, the township supervisors clearly want to take over trash collection for it’s own sake. When a citizen asked why they are rushing this and not putting it to a referendum, seeing as how it affects everyone who is also happy with their service along with those who are not, one supervisor replied “We are not rushing this, we have been working on this for years.” When asked to clarify what that meant in light of the fact that service complaints had only been an issue for a few months, the supervisors pointedly changed the topic.
Secondly, after about a half hour of various citizens saying versions of “Wait… what are you doing? We don’t want this.” the supervisors started answering every comment with “Come to the September meeting and we will have comments open before the vote.” They pointed out it was late, and again, the September meeting was when they were going to discuss this. In other words, the next time they would be open to hearing from citizens on this topic in an open forum was a few moments before they voted, at the literal next possible meeting. A problem arose two months ago or so, six days ago they received bids on their solution, and at the next meeting they will decide.
But they don’t feel they are rushing things.
I am fully confident they have, in fact, been wanting to take over the trash collection service industry for years now; what I am now not at all confident in is the idea that they are doing it in response to a problem. Or rather, not the problem of trash collection being late sometimes, but rather the problem of them not having enough political power to sell for favors.
“Oh, come now Doc! You are surely being too cynical!” I hear you reply. “Surely they have just been hearing lots of complaints for years and have been working tirelessly on a future solution. Now is just the last straw that demands their plan be put into action.”
Well, it is possible. However, there are a few good reasons to doubt that. For instance, when one citizen pointed out “How is customer service going to work? Will we be bringing complaints or requests to the company or the township? If the township, how many people are you planning to hire to act as customer service?” the responses quickly turned to “We will discuss that at the next meeting.” A little suspicious if they had been planning how things would work for years, as opposed to merely wanting it.
Further, it has been noted locally that the problems with Co A. started just at the beginning of summer, shortly after Co A. was bought out by a large national firm. That national firm apparently is pants on head insane, because they are embroiled in multiple lawsuits with various municipalities for buying up the local trash collection firm and proceeding to fail at the job. So why were the supervisors working for years to solve a problem that only rose to prominence a few months back? A problem, it is worth noting, that is poor private trash collection service from one of multiple companies, not “What if the dam breaks?” or “How do we keep Philadephians out?” Not exactly an existential threat that warrants spending time working on ahead of the issue.
Additionally, immediately preceding this micro-discussion were quite heated arguments about how to pay for fire and ambulance service, because apparently those are incredibly understaffed but also are doing an alright job but also need many more people and thus much more money, but we don’t have that but we can raise taxes. Which is to say, why are you looking to take on more work and overhead when you haven’t even gotten this more basic and critical function squared away?
So… yea. Other highlights involved sitting through a handful of other votes, all of which were unanimously “Aye”. The fire and ambulance service discussion was the only one that showed any disagreement or points being made. I somehow don’t find myself optimistic that any community comments a few minutes before their vote is suddenly going to change their minds.
I will update after the September meeting on just how open and shut this decision apparently was, as well as the fact that our supervisors will be running for reelection in November of this very year! I wonder if that has anything to do with why they are so keen to get this done before people have time to decide or vote on it…
Anyway, a long post on why all government types devolve to oligarchies is in the works, surprisingly entirely unrelated to this topic. See you then!
I’ll cite, in response to how “township customer service” will work, my township’s former years-long struggle with mailboxes being totally destroyed by the township snowplow...always the same driver.
The solution: A blurb on the township’s website, near the top:
“The Township will not be considering any more issues concerning snowplow damage to mailboxes.”
It would be nice to think local is more accountable than state, nation or global. Thanks for showing up.