Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Decisions on saving money - what are we waiting for?

According to the information presented at the city council committee hearing yesterday during the discussion of the trash tax and various options for reducing costs, the most savings can be obtained by sub-contracting with an outside supplier.

"Paul Rasmusson, general manager of Allied Waste Services, said his company offered the city an $8.4 million a year contract for 10 years, which would mean $4.3 million in savings.

Allied Waste was the only company to respond to the city's request for a proposal.

A second option, which would save nearly $3 million a year, is to spend $12.2 million to buy 40 new automated refuse trucks and continue with city workers collecting trash and recyclables."

So if we could save the most amount of money by contracting with Allied Waste, why aren't we signing a contract? After all, we've got an $8 million deficit.

No - wait - it increased to $15 million, according to the mayor earlier this month.

Sorry - it's really $16.9 million, according to the clerk of council.

Oops - again, my apologies - the latest figure is $22-27 million, depending...

See what I mean? And no decisions were made yesterday about what to do. What, exactly, are we waiting for?

2 comments:

Timothy W Higgins said...

Maggie,

My cynical belief is that we are waiting until we actually lay off 75 policeman. The ensuing panic will provide the cover for council and the mayor to raise the taxes and fees for those of us paying them with little thought of political reprecussions.

Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

Maggie,

A few thoughts are running through my head.

Our garbage trucks aren't that old, about 6-years old right now, so I have trouble with the "We HAVE to replace them" excuse.

This Allied waste bid/contract; I suppose that it would be paid through the city, thereby keeping some level of administration "busy" at the city (and therefore, the City's finger still in the pie.

Somewhere I am still suspicious of our (as in Toledo's) need to buy the containers; seems to me (again) that buying from the Contracting company would be cheaper, assuming that the kickbacks aren't to steep.

And finally, I would LOVE to see what in the RFP held the responses down to only one company...

That's most/all of my conspiracy theories..., for now ;-)

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