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Ward 2 Ald. Gail Simpson is tired of dealing with
garbage. Her east-side ward experiences some of the
city’s biggest problems with fly dumping and abandoned trash piles,
so the issue became a top priority during her campaign for City Council. Although Simpson and other members of the council
haven’t found answers to the area’s garbage problem, the gears
are again in motion after this week’s first of two waste-subcommittee
hearings. The new panel, chaired by Ward 6 Ald. Mark Mahoney,
continues a public discussion that Mayor Tim Davlin joined nearly four
years ago. Shortly after he was elected in 2003, the mayor met with key
players, including representatives of the city’s four major waste
haulers, and even hired an environmental consultant at a cost of $75 per
hour for assistance.
Now, new aldermen appear to be starting over. “It’s going to take gathering information
and learning what other cities do that are comparable to our size,”
Simpson says, “and the City Council and subcommittee need to be
willing to make recommendations and come up with ordinances.”
Several Springfield officials attended Monday’s
initial round of discussion. Public-works director Mike Norris informed the
panel that it can take anywhere from seven days to three weeks for an
offender to be prosecuted for not using a trash service, and even then the
individual may escape unscathed with a temporary slip of subscription. Wynne Coplea, manager of the city’s Division of
Waste and Recycling, provided the panel with a synopsis of garbage-service
details from eight nearby cities. Only two of the eight — Champaign
and Urbana — offer a similar system of open subscription, but Coplea
says that costs are comparable across the board. “We are by no means exorbitant,” says
Coplea. “We’re right in line with the other cities. We’re
cheaper. We’re doing better.”
The need for competition was a recurring subject at
the meeting. Don Crenshaw, president of Lake Area Disposal Services, said
that although his 75-year old company captured a profit when the city was
split into zones, he would not favor a return to the old system. “You would lose your competition if you zone
it,” Crenshaw says. “Competition is what private business is
all about.”
While the council hesitates over creating zones and
implementing contracts, Simpson stands on the side of those who feel that
loss of competition should not be a future issue. “Overall, resistance to change will be one of
the biggest factors that slow this process,” Simpson says, “and
people not understanding that there can still be competition.”
A secondary issue dividing those involved is a lack
of accurate facts and figures. “There was a discrepancy in the number of
households that do not have pickup,” Mahoney says. “We need to
find out exactly what we’re looking at and kind of work through that
process.”
At its next meeting, on July 16, the waste
subcommittee will hear comments from neighborhood associations, landlord
associations, and the general public, as well as from the county health
department, on waste-collection licensing.
Mahoney says that the biggest obstacle in this entire
process will be persuading residents to change. “The way we approach waste now, there is a
choice, and there will be a desire to keep that choice,” he says,
“but we need to make sure the city is clean and livable. We have to
deal with these problems.”
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2007.
