ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 3, 1996 TAG: 9608050070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
For the first time, Roanoke City Manager Bob Herbert is asking City Council to study whether it would be cheaper for private haulers to pick up residential trash than for city crews to continue doing it.
Herbert expressed strong reservations in the past about turning waste collection over to companies, and council decided three months ago not to solicit proposals for private garbage pickup.
Herbert says his main concern then was that in the event of a private hauler's financial failure or other troubles, the city might have no way to pick up garbage. Friday, Herbert wasn't ready to elaborate, but he said recent research and discussions have convinced him that ``maybe my assumptions are incorrect.''
City Council is approaching a showdown on just who will pick up trash - private haulers, a trimmed crew of city workers in new automated trucks, the city/county Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, or some combination of those.
Browning Ferris Industries, a national trash hauler and owner of the Roanoke-based Handy Dump, is waging an all-out campaign to collect the city's trash. It has published newspaper ads, met with council members, conducted a poll and run a phone bank to build public support for private trash pickup. The Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce has weighed in on BFI's side and offered to set up a team to do research for council.
BFI claims it can save the city $3million over the next five years. That's the same amount the city plans to spend over the next two years on new automated ``one-armed bandit'' trucks that would be run by a single worker, rather than the three it takes to operate the old garbage trucks. The new trucks would be similar to those used in Roanoke County.
Though council has approved the purchase of new trucks and containers to serve about half the city's homes, BFI is pushing for Roanoke to wait to hear its offer to cover the entire city. The company says it pays 20 percent less for trucks and containers than the city would.
Even if Roanoke goes to private pickup, some council members believe the city should run a partial fleet of garbage trucks in case it suddenly is without a private contractor. Others think all homes in the city should have only one kind of hauler - private, or municipal.
Though Herbert's new openness to private collection of residential waste is good news to companies such as BFI, the companies worry about another idea on the table: that the resource authority be empowered to collect the commercial garbage that's the bread and butter of private haulers. ``We're very concerned and opposed to that,'' said Mike Mee, a BFI marketer.
At council's 2 p.m. meeting Monday, Herbert will ask council members to set a public hearing on allowing the resource authority to compete with private companies to collect commercial waste.
BFI, Waste Management of Virginia and Virginia Container Service Corp. collect almost all the valley's commercial waste - about 85,000 tons a year - according to John Hubbard, resource authority director. The city collects a small amount of commercial trash, mostly downtown and at small businesses that have no room for Dumpsters.
In a July 19 memo to council obtained by The Roanoke Times, Herbert warned that if commercial haulers begin taking their waste to a growing number of private, competitively priced landfills, tipping fee income at the valley's new Smith Gap landfill would drop and threaten local governments' ability to cover the $3million annual bond payment for construction.
Hubbard said a loss of BFI and Virginia Container's business alone at Smith Gap would cost the authority $4.4 million in annual income and raise disposal rates from $50 to $83 a ton.
Herbert is recommending that the authority's charter be amended to allow it to enter the commercial waste market and protect the waste flow. However, the authority does not want to get into that business unless forced to, he emphasized Friday.
"We need the waste," Hubbard said. "We want that ability to go out and collect it."
Governments in other areas have been strengthening controls on waste flows ever since a U.S. Supreme Court decision that municipalities may not require private haulers to dump waste in public landfills.
Council members come at the garbage issue with many concerns.
The proposed new trucks would require 25 fewer workers and save $700,000 a year, according to city budget analyst Sherman Stovall. Unneeded employees gradually would be transferred to other city jobs.
Councilman William White, an accountant, wants to be sure workers will survive the changes unscathed. ``I don't want the cost savings to be made on the backs of employees on the lower end of the pay scale,'' he said.
Jim McClung, manager of solid waste management for the city, said his workers served on committees that came up with the proposal for the new trucks and planned the shifting of employees to new jobs. A driver and another garbage truck worker served on Herbert's task force studying garbage issues.
Council member Nelson Harris objected to a recent BFI ad in The Roanoke Times asking residents to urge council to save the $3 million on trucks and spend the money instead on school air conditioning, computers or more teachers.
The School Board has asked council for money to add air conditioning at the 12 elementary school still lacking it. The funding could come from a referendum planned next year.
``You + City Council Cool Schools,'' the ad read. Only a tiny BFI logo at the bottom of the ad offered any clue as to who placed it or why. Harris said that even if the city eventually switches to private haulers, there's no assurance how any savings might be spent.
Harris initially was perplexed when an elderly woman approached him at church and said, ``Y'all ought to air-condition the schools.''
``Bless her heart,'' he said. ``She was just all confused.''
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