Wednesday
Dec172008
« Commissioners get earful over socialized garbage »
Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 12:39AM
Tonight was not a good night to be a Gwinnett County commissioner. During the open comment period at the end of tonight's monthly public hearing, a string of unhappy Gwinnett residents clearly voiced their opposition to socialized garbage to the commissioners. Speakers addressed the elimination of economic choice, potential fines, mandatory recycling, incorporation of payment into tax bills and the fact that the new program would cost some people more money. While a few were less incensed than others, the opposition to the plan was virtually unanimous. If you did not attend the hearing or watch the coverage live, I would strongly encourage you to go and view the archived video of the meeting. I lived Twittered the comment period and you can find my observations on my Twitter feed.
I was glad to see such a strong element of community involvement tonight. While I strongly agreed with most of the comments, I could not help but feel it was too little too late. I know I have said this, but I will say it again because I think this is the key lesson here. People should have been this engaged while the ordinance was being considered. If they had regularly followed the work of their government, their anger tonight could have been instrumental in forcing the commissioners to address solid waste issues in a different manner. I am not attempting to criticize any readers who just recently became aware of what the commission has done to them; I simply hope this lesson will result in an uptick in interest in county government.
I would like to take a moment to reflect on District 2 Commissioner Bert Nasuti's comments after many citizens had their say. While I have been critical of Nasuti on several recent issues (the baseball stadium and the retreat), I generally have found him to be thoughtful commissioner who does try to consider both sides of an issue. He offered an overview of the history of the ordinance's adoption. According to Nasuti, one of the impetuses for the garbage monopolies in districts across the county was complaints regarding the number of weekly trips made by garbage trucks in neighborhoods. I have commented before that this is a trivial complaint. There is not much more I can think to add to what I have previously said, but I would like to counter this argument with a simple illustration. If eight different haulers serve my neighborhood, that is eight to sixteen trips per week (depending on whether there is as separate trip by a recycling truck). Every day, a school bus serving each of the local high school, middle school and elementary school makes two trips to my neighborhood for a total of six trips per day. By Wednesday afternoon, with 12 trips remaining, school buses have surpassed the number of weekly garbage truck trips. We don't hear people complaining about the number of times a school bus lumbers through the neighborhood do we? If this complaint was a key reason for Nasuti to support this ordinance, I would encourage him to think very hard about taking the necessary steps to reverse this unAmerican law.
Nasuti, however, did make some very valid observations about opposition to the ordinance. He noted that he never heard an outcry until about six weeks ago. This highlights the point I made previously about residents not being involved. He also noted that, when it comes to returning constituent phone calls, those who leave voicemails ranting and raving as opposed to offer reasoned feedback will fall to the bottom of the list. This hit close to home, because I have been guilty of my fair share of ranting and raving here on the Buzz. I know not to expect a lot of response from my commissioner or any other official on the board. However, getting personal attention is not the role I play. Being a vocal critic attracts attention. In doing so, my goal is to encourage others to get involved, hopefully in a manner that will positively encourage change from our elected officials. When my criticism attracts attention from the real news media, the goal of awareness is forwarded. On a good day, 150 people might wander into the Buzz. However, vastly more people that than will learn of a dissenting opinion when it gets covered, for example, in the AJC or on 11Alive News.
The above being said, I would hope that all citizens, even if very unhappy, remember that our commissioners are people too. As a result, I would hope my fellow Gwinnettians would, as Chairman Bannister admonished the crowd several times tonight, "be nice." These men and women, while definitely politicians, are not the hard-boiled Washington variety. They are "citizen politicians," most of whom have a real day job just like you or I. I know from experience, even if you strongly disagree, they are approachable as individuals and understand that politics will engender disagreement on issues.
To wrap up this up (because I could go on about this for hours), the commissioners got a very loud and clear message tonight. Commissioner Nasuti even noted that, though they had good intentions - an assertion on which I will give the benefit of the doubt - there were some points they did not consider. The people made it clear that those points are far more important than the board may have recognized. The question remains whether they will act on these citizen concerns. As one speaker noted, contracts can be broken - corporate America does it all the time. The board can regain a lot of respect, at least from me, if they are strong enough to admit an error and correct it to the fullest extent of their power. I hope this is what happens, with or without a court forcing their hand. I hope the Board of Commissioners do the right thing regarding the garbage ordinance. However, if they don't, the people will be watching, and I get the sense that on this issue Gwinnett residents won't so easily forget, especially come election day.
I was glad to see such a strong element of community involvement tonight. While I strongly agreed with most of the comments, I could not help but feel it was too little too late. I know I have said this, but I will say it again because I think this is the key lesson here. People should have been this engaged while the ordinance was being considered. If they had regularly followed the work of their government, their anger tonight could have been instrumental in forcing the commissioners to address solid waste issues in a different manner. I am not attempting to criticize any readers who just recently became aware of what the commission has done to them; I simply hope this lesson will result in an uptick in interest in county government.
I would like to take a moment to reflect on District 2 Commissioner Bert Nasuti's comments after many citizens had their say. While I have been critical of Nasuti on several recent issues (the baseball stadium and the retreat), I generally have found him to be thoughtful commissioner who does try to consider both sides of an issue. He offered an overview of the history of the ordinance's adoption. According to Nasuti, one of the impetuses for the garbage monopolies in districts across the county was complaints regarding the number of weekly trips made by garbage trucks in neighborhoods. I have commented before that this is a trivial complaint. There is not much more I can think to add to what I have previously said, but I would like to counter this argument with a simple illustration. If eight different haulers serve my neighborhood, that is eight to sixteen trips per week (depending on whether there is as separate trip by a recycling truck). Every day, a school bus serving each of the local high school, middle school and elementary school makes two trips to my neighborhood for a total of six trips per day. By Wednesday afternoon, with 12 trips remaining, school buses have surpassed the number of weekly garbage truck trips. We don't hear people complaining about the number of times a school bus lumbers through the neighborhood do we? If this complaint was a key reason for Nasuti to support this ordinance, I would encourage him to think very hard about taking the necessary steps to reverse this unAmerican law.
Nasuti, however, did make some very valid observations about opposition to the ordinance. He noted that he never heard an outcry until about six weeks ago. This highlights the point I made previously about residents not being involved. He also noted that, when it comes to returning constituent phone calls, those who leave voicemails ranting and raving as opposed to offer reasoned feedback will fall to the bottom of the list. This hit close to home, because I have been guilty of my fair share of ranting and raving here on the Buzz. I know not to expect a lot of response from my commissioner or any other official on the board. However, getting personal attention is not the role I play. Being a vocal critic attracts attention. In doing so, my goal is to encourage others to get involved, hopefully in a manner that will positively encourage change from our elected officials. When my criticism attracts attention from the real news media, the goal of awareness is forwarded. On a good day, 150 people might wander into the Buzz. However, vastly more people that than will learn of a dissenting opinion when it gets covered, for example, in the AJC or on 11Alive News.
The above being said, I would hope that all citizens, even if very unhappy, remember that our commissioners are people too. As a result, I would hope my fellow Gwinnettians would, as Chairman Bannister admonished the crowd several times tonight, "be nice." These men and women, while definitely politicians, are not the hard-boiled Washington variety. They are "citizen politicians," most of whom have a real day job just like you or I. I know from experience, even if you strongly disagree, they are approachable as individuals and understand that politics will engender disagreement on issues.
To wrap up this up (because I could go on about this for hours), the commissioners got a very loud and clear message tonight. Commissioner Nasuti even noted that, though they had good intentions - an assertion on which I will give the benefit of the doubt - there were some points they did not consider. The people made it clear that those points are far more important than the board may have recognized. The question remains whether they will act on these citizen concerns. As one speaker noted, contracts can be broken - corporate America does it all the time. The board can regain a lot of respect, at least from me, if they are strong enough to admit an error and correct it to the fullest extent of their power. I hope this is what happens, with or without a court forcing their hand. I hope the Board of Commissioners do the right thing regarding the garbage ordinance. However, if they don't, the people will be watching, and I get the sense that on this issue Gwinnett residents won't so easily forget, especially come election day.
Reader Comments (13)
First of all, Bert Nasuti is not my commissioner. Last December when I read of the final plan in the newspaper, I e-mailed my commissioner & Chairman Bannister to express my problem with them taking away my choice of a garbage hauler. I guess I need to CC Mr. Nasuti from now on. Either the people in his district aren’t paying attention or his district is the one with the biggest illegal dumping problem.
I must take issue with Commissioner Nasuti’s assertion that he had not heard of any opposition to the plan until the last few weeks. If he had taken the time to look through the details of the 600 or so page document that GCB provided with the new plan, he would have seen that at least 38 of the 80 comments GCB received about possible changes to the plan, the commentor(s) specifically stated that they did not want the choice of choosing a garbage hauler taken away. In addition, he would have seen that the over 5,000 people that were surveyed is remarkably close to the number of e-blasts that GCB issues monthly, 5,500. If you ask the foxes what they want for dinner and ignore what the hen says, you really don’t get an accurate picture of what everyone wants. The surveys, meetings, hearings all had low turn outs because they were not well advertised. People are busy. Why not do a public service announcement on the radio? And the water bill insert did not say “Do you want no choice of a garbage hauler, mandatory garbage pickup& mandatory recycling?” If he had looked at the details he would have also seen that nowhere in the research did GCB try to figure out why 20,000 people don't have garbage service. If they had, they would have learned that there are many legitimate reasons as stated last night at the meeting.
I cry foul! As far as trucks going up and down neighborhood streets, it is aggravating, but no more so than UPS trucks, Water Resources sewer trucks, and especially school buses. The most aggravating thing with garbage trucks is them stopping every few feet out on major, busy roads such as Old Fountain and Dacula Roads and running across the street to grab a can. I can assure you that ain't going to stop, actually it'll probably get worse. What are they going to do to solve that issue?
As Busymom states as well, the issue was not advertised very well. My position allows me to see and know a little more about what government is up to than the average citizen, and most of the details of this I couldn't even find out. That is a tight-lipped bunch over there. Government, even local ones, have learned if you treat your constituents like mushrooms you can get away with a lot more.
Busymom, thanks for your comments and for reading the Buzz. I was wondering, do you have links regarding the number of subscribers to the GCB email newsletter and the number of socialized garbage surveys sent out? I think it would be interesting to pose this question to Connie Wiggins and see if she will comment on where the recipient list for the socialized garbage poll came from.
FinanceBuzz,I had to make an appointment with the county clerk to review the Draft plan and the approved plan, which seemed to be the same thing. I wanted to find out when all these opportunities to express an opinion were & to see how they did the surveys. I did not see a copy of the water bill insert. The two telephone survey questions were listed. I don't recall seeing a copy of the web survey. The 80 comments they had received at some point were there including the name of the person who submitted the comment. Other than the telephone survey questions & the comments, there was very little detail about the public input. Most of the public notice portion was a summary who the target "audience" was and how many of a particular media was used, nothing specific as to who the people were who received the notice requesting input. I made a list of all the dates and who was involved. It is my understanding that the e-blasts go to people who sign up to get newsletter updates on GCB's website.
I should probably e-mail you instead. This is getting long. Let me know if you'd rather I do that.
FinanceBuzz.....Although I'm not real pleased with the BoC and some of their decisions, I managed to gain some respect for them and the process between reading your blog, twitter comments, and watching them in action last night.
As you wrote, they are not the "hard boiled Washington variety" and I will agree. They seem to be a little more in tune with their constituents than say a Senator, congressman, etc.
I, too, am guilty of ranting to Commissioner Beaudreau recently and although he responded initially, I doubt he will in the future if I were to continue to be less than diplomatic.
Appreciate your effort and I'll try to help as opposed to hurt the causes. It's good to be informed and really convenient with a blog like this.
Busymom, whatever you feel more comfortable with. If there is nothing that you don't want to post publicly, I would recommend leaving it here as a comment so that other concerned citizens can benefit from your research. Otherwise, feel free to email me. Either way, thanks for passing on what you learning. Thank you for being the type of citizen to care enough to take your time to go and do this research!
Nealsun, thanks for the kind words about the blog. I am glad to know that some folks are getting some benefit from it!
Regarding Mike Beaudreau, I have to admit that personally, he is a likable guy. I interacted with him on a cell tower project I worked on with a previous employer. While he did rule the way I would have preferred, I did enjoy talking with him the community meeting. The topic? College football! (Anyone who can credibly talk about college football gets some points with me!) Also, even after I made many pointed criticisms of him and his position during the primary campaign and strongly backed his opponent, Doug Stacks, he reached out to me afterward about ways that I could use the blog to support John McCain. While I never did as much as I should have on that count, I enjoyed the interactions I had with him during that. The lesson is that it is easy to lose sight, during heated political discourse, that these are just folks like you and I. Granted, given his age, I could see a long political career for Mike, moving beyond county commissioner. If so, perhaps he would become "hard boiled" but he is not now. He noted that citizens have been heard after last night's comments. Here's hoping he and his colleagues react to that in a meaningful way.
FB,
You are correct about Commissioner Beaudreau. As you have heard me say many times he is most certainly a conservative and is very open to hearing from his constiuents and acting on their requests. I have known him always to be courteous and to listen to what folks have to say, even those who may disagree with him. I have never known him not to be that way even when I was running against him. That's why the fact that he voted for this still surprises me. And, I am betting it ain't all his fault. As a decision-maker you can only make decisions based on the information you have. I suspect he may not have had all the information from "staff".
Ok you asked for it -you got it
Here is some more info about how they've "been studying this for almost three years." And all the "opportunities to speak out about the proposal." Unfortunately for us, all of these opportunities were well before the draft plan was presented in 12/2007.
Landmark Communications - President Mark Rountree
conducted 2 phone surveys of 400 people each.
5/1/2006
4/12/2007
Community meetings were held on:
3/9/2007 Dacula
3/15/2007 Suwanee
3/22/2007 Lawrenceville
3/26/2007 Pinckneyville
3/29/2007 Stone Mountain
Exact locations were not listed. 119 people attended in total. According to my notes, int these meetings they discussed the current plan and way to improve it. Attendee comments are listed, like in a brainstorming activity.
There were 11 meetings of the GCB Citizens Advisory Board. It does not say how many members attended each meeting and what was discussed.
4960 responses to the web survey
80 comments
A Public hearing was held on 5/31/2006
Gwinnett Planning Hearing was held 3/21/2007 (note - this is prior to three of the community meetings held) It may have just been a regular public hearing rather than a Planning Comm Public Hearing
They met with Gwinnett Cities:
4/26/2006
9/14/2006
They met with the Haulers:
5/26/2006 (12 Haulers)
2/23/2007 (13 haulers)
They met with the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce
4/3/06
4/12/07
5/?/07
They met with
United Peachtree Corner Civic Assn 11-16-06
Gwinnett Senior Leadership 1-17-07
Golden Triangle Assn 2-5-07
They met with:
2/23/2006 South Gwinnett Rotary Club
11/13/2006 Lawrenceville Rotary
4/24/2007 Rotary Club of Gwinnett
I don't remember seeing any comments except each group asked to be informed of future meetings and final plans.
There were 2 online surveys (my notes are a bit unclear here. Dates may not be exact)
5/2006
and
May & June 20007
they e-mailed 3,000
I am not sure if that is in addition to the Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful e-blasts of 5,500 subscribers or not.
There were also "15 work group meetings" but I am not sure what this means.
One last note, not that anything improper was done, but Mark Rountree (Landmark Communications) has been a campaign consultant for Kevin Kenerly.
FinanceBuzz & Busymom,
Thanks for putting the information out. This whole deal stinks to high heaven. The way they communicated the information was via Water Bill inserts -- Who reads those? Then, they announce it right after the election. Does that sound like good timing? Right after the commission got voted back in the office? And, then they put long term vendors of the county out of business in favor of 2 contractors who had the smallest foot print! FURTHERMORE, the price at least for our neighborhood is about 75% more!
Whomever negotiated these contracts must not have been in touch with the real world and how much the normal charge is! Our HOA managed to get a deal with Waste Industries back in 2004 for $45/quarter for all 3 types of waste -- Garbage, Recycle & Yard Waste. WI added the county fee of $2 and over the last year an incremental fuel surcharge bringing the total to about $52/quarter.
The new/improved service will cost us over $90/quarter and it is basically given to a monopoly in each area. What a great deal for those who won the bid! Wonder if there is any relationship to Tony Soprano in this!
Finally, in May of this year, our board asked for a bid from WastePro for serving our neighborhood. Guess what? Their bid was $48. I still have the document and will be glad to post it for others to review.
I am also planning to fax my current bill and this statement to the fax # 770-822-7097; however, I believe this commission will not do anything about this! We need to start a recall on our commissioners.
I can no longer agree with the idea of "being nice" with people whom we trust to make common sense decisions in government. I do not have a problem specific garbage services, I do not have a problem with additional recycling, in fact I welcome it. I do not like the concept of paying more money for the same service that I previously received, and that was not realized until the contracts were finalized.
I called Gwinnett County Clean and Beautiful and inquired about the price increase. It appears that the price was determined by "averaging the cost of services in the county" The logical thing for the good of the citizens would be the match the lowest price in the county. If a service can be proved for that price, then why can't every service match that price. Restricting government services to two private contractors causing an increase in price sets off the alarms to a mismanagement of government, and, dare I say it, favors of one kind or another to the local politicians.
Does anybody have any suggestions for what to do with the garbage container Advanced Disposal left on the right-of-way in front of my house? I didn't ask for it, made no contract for it, don't want it--but seem to be stuck storing it for them, at least until the whole thing goes to court. I thought just putting it right back where they left it at the end of the driveway as sort of a protest.
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