Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "measure a"

Green waste on-the-street pickup rates could rise

2011-04-07T00:45:48Z

Loose-in-the-street green waste pickup may become more expensive for residents, according to comments made by City Council members Tuesday night.

During a discussion of green waste at Tuesday’s council meeting, the council asked city staff to prepare detailed plans for raising the rates on loose-in-the-street pickup and reducing the level of pickup service from weekly to biweekly. Council members did not make any final decisions on the issue.

Gerald Celestine, a founding member of Friends of Fremont Park, said Wednesday that he thinks loose-in-the-street pickup works better than container pickup for Central City residents.

“We have more trees,” he said. “We have much more green waste.”

The idea of using multiple containers also doesn’t work, he said, because there is not adequate room in the street to place the containers. “Where would people park?” he asked.

The Central City’s situation may be addressed by city staff in the future: The City Council asked staff to provide more information about ways to deal with geographic areas that are particularly leafy.

The city’s systems of green waste pickup – containers and loose-in-the-street – are linked to a 1977 law. Voters passed Measure A that year, which says City Hall cannot force residents to use green waste containers.

While the city says that only 12,121 properties now use loose-in-the-street pickup, it must offer loose-in-the-street pickup because of Measure A.

By contrast, 103,787 properties in the city are using containers now, according to the Utilities Department.

The rate cannot remain at $13.71 per month because there are so few people now sharing the cost burden, according to city staff.

City staff argue that keeping the rates at $13.71 breaks state law Proposition 218, which says utilities rates must correspond to the costs of providing utilities services.

The rates should be higher, according to city staff, because so few people are still using loose-in-the-street pickup that their service is being subsidized by other solid waste rates.

Councilman Kevin McCarty noted Tuesday that city staff would work with the city’s Utilities Rate Advisory Commission on plans to raise rates for loose-in-the-street pickup.

Utilities Department staff has suggested raising rates for weekly loose-in-the-street pickup from $13.71 to $40 per month to match the costs of the service.

Alternately, staff suggested that the City Council could raise rates from $13.71 to $25, but scale down the service from weekly to every other week to align with the cost of service.

Staff also pointed out that the city still provides eight loose-in-the-street pickups each year to customers who use containers.

While council members said they want to explore the ideas of raising rates for pickup, McCarty and Cohn expressed hesitancy about the dollar amounts that staff proposed and noted that they weren’t agreeing to those amounts Tuesday night.

“Let’s not be on the record saying we approve either one,” Cohn said.

Council members also said they want to ask the public to vote in 2012 on whether to repeal Measure A.

“I’d like to go to the voters as soon as possible to take a look at repealing Measure A from 1977,” McCarty said Wednesday. “Clearly, times have changed, and I think we ought to look at reversing course on this 35-year-old policy.”

McCarty said there are a number of benefits to containers, including improved air quality resulting from fewer trucks picking up leaves and cleaner bike lanes.

Utilities Department spokeswoman Jessica Hess said the department has not yet set a date for when the green waste issue will be addressed at City Council again.

“We have a desire to correct the issue,” Hess said. “We are going to work on getting that expedited.”

Read the staff report here.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Green waste debate to resume

2011-02-26T02:04:51Z

A city staff proposal to eventually stop loose-in-the-street green waste pickup and move to container pickup will not work for all city residents, Interim City Manager Gus Vina said in an interview Thursday.

In tree-laden areas such as Midtown, a container is not adequate to hold all of the fallen leaves, Vina said, explaining why he pulled the green waste issue from the City Council’s agenda on Tuesday.

“I want to make sure I’ve challenged staff enough on creativity and the solutions that are possible,” Vina said.

The plan that Vina delayed would have encouraged moving away from loose-in-the street pickup and raised rates for residents who continue that method of pickup. Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said the green waste issue will be on the City Council agenda again within a couple weeks.

The city uses two systems for green waste pickup because of a law that was passed in 1977. Measure A states that the city cannot compel residents to put their green waste in containers. Therefore, the city must continue to provide loose-in-the-street pickup.

The proposal that was pulled from the council agenda Tuesday asked the City Council to take steps to eventually overturn Measure A. This would allow the city to enforce containerized pickup as the sole method.

Voters would have to approve a counter-measure that would abolish Measure A.

City staff had planned to ask the council on Tuesday to consider draft language for a counter-measure “for use if the City Council determines at a subsequent time to call such a measure to the ballot,” the Feb. 22 staff report said.

But Vina said Thursday that changing the measure doesn’t solve the green waste problem for people living “in heavy areas where a container doesn’t do it.”

“Land Park and Midtown are good examples,” he said Friday. “Basically, we have lots of trees, and in older areas, the trees are big.”

The proposal also included major rate increases for people who choose loose-in-the-street pickup over containers as long as Measure A is still in effect. A resident who chooses loose-in-the-street pickup now pays a fee of $13.71 per month. One of the ideas suggested in the proposal would raise the rate to about $40 per month.

City staff explained in the proposal that the number of loose-in-the-street customers has declined over time – the 103,787 container customers far surpass the 12,121 loose-in-the-street customers. The number of loose-in-the-street customers no longer pay enough in fees to pay for the cost of the service, the report said.

“The current loose-in-the-street rate of $13.71 was sufficient to recover the full cost when 57,000 customers were putting their green waste in the street,” according to the report. “With only 12,121 loose-in-the-street customers remaining paying the same rate, there is now insufficient funding to cover the cost of the service.”

Because there are no longer enough customers to keep the rate at $13.71 per month, city staff say the rate should be raised.

Green waste pickup is a recurring point of contention between the Utilities Department, which favors containers, and some residents, who want to keep their loose-in-the-street pickup.

The department’s position, which is included in the staff report, is that the containers are cheaper and better for the environment than loose-in-the-street pickup. It takes two vehicles to do loose-in-the-street pickup, while only one is needed for containers, according to the department. Reducing the number of vehicles helps prevent pollution, the department points out.

Read the Feb. 22 green waste proposal that Vina withdrew from the council’s agenda here.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

To Bin or Not to Bin: The story of Sacramento's green waste battles

2009-11-29T17:41:23Z

The debate over the Sacramento Utilities Department's desire to use bins for green waste pickup has a familiar ring.

This isn’t the first time green waste has been a hot topic in Sacramento. Green waste disposal was controversial as far back as 1977, when a fierce fight took place between those who wanted bins and those who sought to maintain on-the-street pickup.

Utilities Department Director Marty Hanneman said that staff plan to bring the issue to the City Council on Jan. 21 or Jan. 28. Supporters of the bins argue that their method is cost-effective, while bin opponents say on-the-street pickup is the most convenient system.

The department's position is that bins would be a cheaper and more environmentally friendly method of green waste pickup, according to a Nov. 24 department report. Residents now pay $12.35 per month for on-the-street pickup, while bins would cost $9.37, Hanneman said.

Councilman Robbie Waters also favors bins, Hanneman noted. Waters, whose district includes the Pocket neighborhood, asked the Utilities Department to bring the issue to the City Council, Hanneman said.

If the City Council decides in January that it wants to exchange on-the-street pickup for a bin system, the issue will have to go on a ballot. And there's a historical reason for that.

Voters approved an ordinance in 1977 to ban the city from establishing the use of bins for pickup. When residents put their opposition to bins into law, they made it difficult for the city to change the rules.

Measure A, the 1977 ordinance, includes language requiring a majority of Sacramento voters to overturn or change the law.

A group called Citizens for City Service championed Measure A. The group argued that it is easier for citizens to manage their green waste if the city picks up leaf piles on the street rather than in bins. They also said that a $2 monthly service fee for green waste pickup was affordable.

In the text of a proposal for Measure A, Bolton Phillips of the Citizens for City Service characterized the opposing camp as being made up of residents and certain city councilmembers and staffers.

"[The opponents of Measure A] want us to put all those tons of yard and garden refuse in non-biodegradable plastic bags and other containers before collection," Phillips wrote in the proposal. “They say this will save us money. This is not true. Without the service fee and workers, we will buy expensive plastic bags each week, then spend our valuable time and energy filling them.”

Joseph Coomes, Jr., president of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce in 1977, countered Phillips’ points in the text of the proposal for the measure. He objected to Phillips’ argument that residents would have to buy plastic bags.

“THIS IS NOT THE CASE!,” he wrote, using capital letters. “Any box, can or even paper bag of proper size and weight is acceptable. It can easily be drafted into law that plastic bags cannot be used!”

Opponents argued that a bin system would generate savings in taxes of more than $1 million per year.

The proposal notes that opponents of Measure A included Sacramento’s mayor at the time, Philip Isenberg, as well as representatives from the County Taxpayer’s League, Inc. of Sacramento County and the Sacramento Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO.

In 1988, there was an attempt to overturn Measure A through the ballot. But that effort, which was called Measure F, was unsuccessful, according to the Utilities Department's report.

Read the text of the 1977 proposal for Measure A here.

What's going on now with green waste?

Today, in many Sacramento neighborhoods, workers remove piles of green waste from the street with the "claw" machine and a second vehicle.

However, residents in some sections of the city can choose bins instead of on-the-street pickup, according to the Utilities Department's report. About 85,000 residents have chosen to use bins, the report notes.

Bins are now set up through an opt-out system. The city gives bins to certain neighborhoods, and residents must refuse them to maintain an on-the-street pickup method, according to Hanneman. “If you don’t want it, you’ve got to let us know you don’t want it,” Hanneman said.

This means that both systems — bins and on-the-street pickup — are used.

The department, which has twice postponed a presentation to the City Council this month, is calculating the costs of the bin and on-the-street pickup systems, according to Hanneman. Thousands of residents recently joined the bin system, which means that the department needs to update its figures for the City Council, he said.

The changing numbers still show that bins would be cheaper, Hanneman said. “It’s definitely more expensive to do loose-in-the-street than containerized,” he said.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.