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Garbage rates will rise with renewal of contract
By ANNE LINDBERG © St. Petersburg Times, published October 15, 2000 KENNETH CITY -- Garbage rates will go up after a split Town Council refused to see if another company would charge less than Waste Management. The 4-1 decision means residential rates will increase 30 cents per month, or about 3 percent. Businesses will receive the biggest hit. Their rates will increase $1.20 per cubic yard. That means if a business has a trash container that holds 8 cubic yards of waste, that business' bill will go up by $9.60. A representative from another garbage company at the meeting estimated that will increase business rates by as much as 30 percent. The new fees will go into effect on Jan. 1. The decision outraged Kenneth City residents who had urged council members to send out the town's garbage contract for bids to see if any other companies would give less expensive service than Waste Management. The overall contract is estimated at $1-million a year. People need to come to council meetings and see that members vote without knowing the facts and waste taxpayers' money, Kenneth City resident Teresa Zemaitis said. If residents watched the council members in action, they would vote them out of office, she said. "It's beyond me how . . . you went ahead and stuck with Waste Management anyway," Zemaitis told council members. "How dare you do that." Waste Management has held Kenneth City's contract for the past five years and will keep it for another three after Wednesday's vote. Zemaitis thanked Mayor Bill Smith for voting against the contract renewal. Smith was the sole vote against renewing the Waste Management contract. The audience applauded Zemaitis' comments. Ted Wiesner, another Kenneth City resident, also praised Smith and criticized the other council members for "ignoring every single resident who got up to speak." Wiesner received a smattering of applause. Council member Al Carrier made the motion to extend the Waste Management contract for another three years. However, he never mentioned the increased costs. It was not until Smith asked if the Waste Management representative knew what the charges would be that the topic came up. In response to Smith's question, the company representative handed out a letter that set forth the new costs. It was the first time most of the council had seen the information. That astounded Skip Sharp of East Bay Sanitation. He wanted to have the chance to bid on the contract so he could undercut Waste Management's prices. "It's a significant amount of money," Sharp said of the contract. He pointed out that it costs nothing to ask for bids and questioned the wisdom of the council's voting on information it had just received. Carrier responded, "I saw this information in advance." Residents were also appalled at the council's apparent willingness to vote on an item about which members knew little. They were particularly upset because members apparently did not know the costs going into the vote and would not have had Smith not requested the information. They urged the council to send the contract out for bids. "You don't have anything to lose," former Kenneth City Mayor Harold Paxton said. "You've only got something to gain." Zemaitis agreed, saying: "It only makes sense to get bids. It's just a good business decision." Council member Ron Sneed said the issue was not just price. Sneed said he was afraid a new company would increase its rates a lot in the second year of the contract to make up for any losses the first year. That would especially be true, he said, if the company was based in Tampa and its trucks had to travel a longer distance to get to the town. Carrier agreed, saying, "Next year, they will hit us with a heck of an increase." Paxton tried to explain that that's why the town would have a contract. The contract could limit the amount of increase the company could ask for while the document was in effect. "Mr. Marino can write it so we won't lose," said Paxton, referring to town attorney Paul Marino. "I can't see what we're hurting by going out for bid." But council members refused to listen. Except for Smith, they voted to extend the contract for three more years.
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