BY DAVE PARRO
It looks like the waste-hauling companies bidding for Aurora's garbage contract are going to try their hardest to gouge residents with a ridiculous fee increase.
The "best" bid came in from Allied Waste at $2.93 a sticker, a huge jump from the current price of $2.35 that would also come with a reduction in services. Waste Management came in with a laughable and inexplicable price of $3.75 a sticker, which would amount to a 60 percent hike.
None of the bids are pretty. Alderman Chris Beykirch plans to make a proposal next week that he says will move away from stickers and toward standardized collection -- that is, a flat-fee system. He says the current system is outdated and makes Aurora less attractive for competitive bids. Based on the bids the city received this time around, he might be right.
A comparison of sticker vs. flat-fee systems in the area, however, shows that the volume-based system is cheaper nearly everywhere for residents who use one sticker a week. Fifty-two stickers right now costs an Aurora resident $122.20. Folks in surrounding towns with flat fees pay as much as $205 annually.
This has the feeling of a big story in the making. And it doesn't look like it'll have a happy ending for Aurora residents.
I am absolutely against a flat-rate system. Why should our family, who generates one bag of trash weekly, have to subsidize people who don't bother to recycle? And I have friends who live in communities that use huge one-size-fits-all plastic trash cans--those things are a nightmare on a windy day, blowing around the neighborhood & blocking driveways. I should be able to pay for MY trash to be collected, and no more! It's bad enough the sewer bill went up 40%--although I wouldn't complain if I were getting a 40% salary increase.
I know it is going to cost more to transport the garbage because no one seems to want a landfill near their home. Sometimes I think they dump this stuff clear out by Rock Falls? I can't just say the increase is not justified, but I definitely would want to know what increased costs the waste hauler is incurring. I certainly don't want to be paying salaries that are greater than mine. I do believe garbage haulers are paid "gold". It astonished me that anyone wouldn't respect a garbage hauler, who, if I'm not mistaken, make somewhere in the area of $50,000. a year with a little seniority. Those unions sure take care of their people---but at whose costs???
Sorry, I thought this article was about the current Mayor and how he makes deals.
Until moving to Aurora a decade ago I lived in Chicago, where Mayor Daley introduced his blue bag program. We had to pay for special blue bags (not any blue bags but expensive ones with the city's Blue Bag logo) to recycle, but regular waste pickup was no charge. When we moved to Aurora and learned that recycling was free but we had to pay for regular pickup, we saw how dumb Daley's plan really was.
Our five-person, multi-pet household generates a lot of trash but we also recycle a lot! Flat rate would take away some of the incentive to do right with our trash (though we hope the habit is now instilled in our children). It would be great if we could maintain the cost of trash stickers, but as the anonymous poster notes above, that's not realistic if trash needs to be hauled a great distance (think gas prices cutting into the haulers' margins). If trash stickers go up in price we won't be thrilled but suspect more people will recognize this incentive to recycle.