For the past 10 years, Waste Management (WM) has picked up the garbage from homes and businesses in Lake Forest. This has earned WM enormous sums in fees, and WM has been generous to our city council members, lavishing them with thousands of dollars in “campaign contributions”, and our city council members have, in turn, continuously voted to give WM extensions of their contract. The love-fest and mutual-enrichment program is about to come to a halt when a new contract is awarded in 2014, although WM is one of the probable companies who will bid for the new contract.
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS
Just to be sure we’re on the same page, here’s a history of payments from WM to city council members’ campaign committees. Back in 2002 WM gave Dixon and Herzog $2000 and shortly after that they voted to give WM their contract. WM continued to make periodic payments to Dixon and Herzog’s election committees and then extended the money to cover committees for Rudolph ($2500), Tettemer ($2000), and McCullough ($1000). As soon as new Council member Scott Voigts joined the Council in 2010, WM gave his committee $1000 (5/21/2011). About that same time, WM gave Peter Herzog another $1000 (5/26/2011).
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NEW MANDATE FOR RECYLCING
The city council and staff have spent hours discussing the new contract. No, they haven’t been talking about how much in campaign contributions the new company will give them. That would be tacky. Instead, they have been talking about the nuts and bolts of the new program, and in particular, the needs of the city to meet the legislation from the State that mandates recycling. Indeed, they’ve hired a consulting firm to help them write the RFP.
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The new goal is that the city achieves 75% recycling for businesses with 4 cubic yards of weekly garbage and for multi-family units of 5 or more. Right now the estimate for businesses is 5%. This means that beginning in 2014, the city estimates they will need to install recycling bins at 9 businesses and 2 restaurants each month. By 2023, they expect to add 370 recycling bins (200 commercial, 100 multi-family, 70 restaurant). Not only must the bins be in place, but effective programs need to be instituted to fill the bins.
IMPACT
So this is going to be an enormous undertaking, costing the city probably $1,000,000 over the life of the contract, and ultimately impacting the lives of everyone in our community as it forces everyone to conform to the new mandates. Not only will this change how we handle our personal garbage (I guess “waste” is the more acceptable word nowadays), businesses will also be forced to change their evil ways, and the cost of doing this will be considerable, and in many cases, passed on to the consumer (that’s you and me).
Beyond our personal habits, the habits of businesses and the corresponding increases in prices, waste disposal vehicles (aka garbage trucks) are one of the biggest users and more importantly destroyers of city and private streets. So a change in how waste is managed will undoubtedly be a change in how it is picked up, and this will impact our traffic as well as the integrity of our streets.
I’m going to take some time to talk about garbage (some wags might quip unkindly that I am always talking “garbage”) in a series of articles, because, as strange and unlikely as this may seem, this issue and this contract may have profound impacts on our lives.
Since this is Part 1 of the series, and since I alluded to the payments from WM to city council members over the years, I’d like to conclude with the recommendation that the council place in this contract (and every other contract that comes before them) language which forbids any company doing business with the city from trying to influence the outcome of city elections by providing any type of assistance to individuals or their campaign committees.
Not only is this the right thing to do, we may find that the cost of contracts goes down, since in the past, keeping city council members’ campaign committees flush was a “cost of doing business”. If we became a city known for our integrity because our council members refuse to accept money from businesses, we might find the city saves some money because the cost of the contract doesn’t have to be inflated to cover the costs of keeping the council happy.
Next time - some facts about trash in Lake Forest
