urbanSTL

Anyone heard the rumor (maybe not a rumor) that the City cannot afford to pay the recycling company and they are no longer picking up our recycling?? I heard from someone in the neighborhood near Hampton and Holly Hills, that they witnessed a St. Louis City trash truck picking up the recycling in their alley. Then after that, they picked up the trash in the same load. Is there any truth to this? I have not witnessed trash trucks picking up recycling. If that is the case, we should not be paying the City a trash fee.

DogtownBnR wrote:Anyone heard the rumor (maybe not a rumor) that the City cannot afford to pay the recycling company and they are no longer picking up our recycling?? I heard from someone in the neighborhood near Hampton and Holly Hills, that they witnessed a St. Louis City trash truck picking up the recycling in their alley. Then after that, they picked up the trash in the same load. Is there any truth to this? I have not witnessed trash trucks picking up recycling. If that is the case, we should not be paying the City a trash fee.

Somebody call Elliot Davis!

Pick up day is tomorrow in my alley. I'll check the dumpsters that showed up Friday. The one thing that doesn't make sense with that is the regular trash and the recycling dumpsters are picked up on different days. They shouldn't be picked up together regardless of where the contents end up. And if that were the case, why would the City be spending money to add all of the dumpsters that have been recently delivered. There is also still a dump fee at the landfill that still has to be payed if recycling isn't diverted out. Costs me $30 a ton when I have a roll-off dumped, so even with a volume discount it's still not cheap for citywide dumping.

I have heard of the occasional yard waste and no yard waste picked up together, but I think that is cases of the driver not paying attention.

Technically, the trash fee and recycling fee are intertwined. We only get one trash pickup a week now and we have to pay for it on top of that. This is supposed to be offset by the recycling dumpsters being utilized and emptied once a week. I questioned that theory from the start. My dumpster is overflowing, lids won't even close most of the week, yet the recycle dumpsters rarely get used. People complain about the small openings and say forget it,I'm dumping that in the dumpster. I am all for recycling, but you will never get some people to do it. Back to the original point, if not for recycling dumpsters, the City would not be able to justify the fee for once a week service. Officially, it is called a trash fee, yes.

I totally agree. The recycling dumpsters were part of the "sell" to pacify folks about the fees. I know that's the way I viewed it when I first heard the news. But then our dumpsters never came.

When we bought our house just three years ago, our water bill was $75/3 months. Now with the "trash" fee it's $126/3 months. And we're not even getting a promised benefit. If you want to call it that. I guess it would save us our weekly stop at the bank of recycling dumpsters down by the RR tracks at the Gasconade ramp to 55.

FWIW, the trash truck that came down my alley this morning was only collecting from the "No Yard Waste" dumpsters.

two men came down the alley and as quick as they could using cordless drills unscrewing screws on the bins and screwing them back on
I asked them about it and they said they were contracted to put in missing washers on EVERY recycle dumpster
hmmmmm

timeforguinness wrote:Found this interesting: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt ... f6878.html

Refuse lost more than $500,000 from bulk trash pickup services, which collect large items from alleyways once a month, and also $700,000 set aside in part to buy recycling bins.

So I guess we're paying for recycling with no recycling bins?

I love how many people on the forum lambasted me for suggesting a public private partnership for trash pickup yet are perfectly content paying the aldermen et al to effectively run the city straight into the ground. I'll bet dollars to donuts you see taxes go up again one way or another. It's abundantly clear the city just raises taxes under the guise of recycling or police budget increases only to funnel the money as they see fit. This fiscal lunacy undermines so many would-be positive things for the city. Shameful.

I might be able to clarify this a bit. First its worth noting that the budget is primarily set by the Mayor, Comptroller, Board Pres, and Budget Division. The Ways & Means committee can adjust allocations, but not increase the total. This year, out of a $450 million operating budget, Ways & Means changed about $2.5 million in allocations, or in other words, they left more than 99% of the budget alone.

The allocation for new recycling containers was reduced from $3m to $2.3m - which if you dig into the numbers should still be enough to deliver service to all the wards that have asked for it. (I care about this, as I have more then 2,800 homes without service yet) If there is a gap, wards can also kick in ward capital to finish out service.

Refuse Dept. o/t was reduced by $500K. O/t was a particularly sore subject because we paid $5.8m city-wide last year while furloughing most employees. The general consensus is that the Refuse Dept. has a scheduling problem. Drivers get paid for 40 hours even if they work less, because they go home when the route is finished. They have a four day week, and may routinely get paid 40 while working 36 on four 9-hour routes, then get paid o/t for bulk pickup. Since we can't set their schedule, reducing o/t is an attempt to rein in a policy where people are being paid o/t after only working 36 hours.

The money went into building demo, vacant lot maintenance, affordable housing, and non-profit and school based crime prevention. All of which are supposed to have funding floors, but which were underfunded last year during a recession and pension induced budget shortfall.

You can agree or disagree with how the money is spent, but I know that people are just trying to provide what they consider essential city services during a very problematic budget period. I can also guarantee that no one is being cavalier about it, as the article implied. Since the reporter was there the entire time, I wish he would have fleshed out the story more completely in the first place.

Scott Ogilvie
24th Ward Alderman

I live downtown and have a small amount of recycling to dispose of. Where's the nearest recycling bin? Does the city provide some kind of Google Map w/ recycling locations embedded? If not, it may be helpful to constituents.

Scott - thank you for addressing our concerns. I anxiously await your answers for the questions above.

Innov8tion, there is a bank of recycling dumpsters just west of 14th Street on Convention/Delmar. That might suit your needs.

Okay - I assume you mean the question about money grabs and the new monthly Refuse fee?

I don't think its a money grab - in fact it actually corrects a "money grab" (a reallocation) from last year, when building demo, forestry, & crime prevention were underfunded compared to previous years. But its worth emphasizing how bad the budget was last year: The city had a $42 million shortfall it had to cover, which was about 9% of the operating budget. Where did most of the shortfall come from? Flat tax revenue and an explosion of pension costs to public employees, police, and fire. Pension costs ballooned from (round numbers) $6 million in 2001 to $40 - 70 million the last few years. This is while the City reduced public employees by 10% over the same period of time. So pension costs increased from about 2% of the budget to about 11 - 15% of the budget. That's huge, and many services felt that pressure with staffing reductions, deferred investments in tech & facilities, and furloughs.

I can't really defend communication from the City on the recycling program and the Refuse fee. The fact that the recycling program has been rolled out in various different ways from ward to ward strikes me as a bit crazy... and its obviously caused plenty of confusion and frustration. We now have a refuse fee because the City has a problematic budget situation, and we also needed to invest about $6 million to begin delivering curbside recycling to most households. Ultimately (by the end of the year) we're going to have a very good recycling service, long overdue, that saves the City a few bucks and is much better environmentally.

Regarding Refuse Dept. scheduling - They control their own schedule - and I don't know that this was the issue in the past that it seems to be today. I've heard that their internal policies may have changed just in the past year, but I can't 100% confirm that.

For me the big picture with the budget are the structural issues we have with city gov. I have been totally convinced in the last two months that the City needs to enter the County and combine the services of several departments. We have a City that I believe requires 400,000+ people to pay for its infrastructure, and we now have 325,000 residents. Entering the County would reduce some costs, in my opinion improve some services, and probably give us more clout in Jeff. City. We also desperately need the police to be integrated into the City's Public Safety Dept. The Police duplicate several City Dept.'s to the tune of roughly $4 million annually. (personnel, communications, etc.) We're also going to need some long term pension adjustments for new hires to be negotiated with Police & Fire, which seems to be making some headway.

I hope that helps,

Scott Ogilvie,
24th Ward Alderman

Overall, the recycling program seems to be going well: St. Louis' single-stream recycling program pays dividends

But 20 months into the city's coordinated recycling efforts, the program is already more than making up for its costs, Waelterman said. He expects the city will bring in close to $15 million this fiscal year. That includes not only funds from the collection fee, which is on track to provide $14.2 million in revenue, but also the savings of sending less trash to landfills.

The city pays a tipping fee of $35 per ton of waste sent to the landfill. By diverting aluminum, glass, paper and plastics to recycling, Waelterman said the city will save $500,000 in fees this year.

Additionally, the city expects to make $300,000 this year by selling the recyclable material to Waste Management, which also manages the city's garbage and yard waste disposal.

Dumb question, but let's see if anyone knows. I'm planning on doing some yard work soon & will end up excavating some dirt. I don't have anywhere else in my yard to put the extra dirt. Does dirt count as "yard waste?" All it says on the city's website is "Yard Waste-including grass, leaves, limbs is not trash anymore!"

^I don't think you can put dirt in the dumpsters. Can't imagine it would be good for the trucks

ricke002 wrote:Dumb question, but let's see if anyone knows. I'm planning on doing some yard work soon & will end up excavating some dirt. I don't have anywhere else in my yard to put the extra dirt.

Have you put an ad on Craigslist? You might be able to find someone who's looking for extra dirt and would be willing to haul it off themselves.