MASON CITY – The Mason City Council will hold a work session on Tuesday night and look at the possibility of a major change to the city’s sanitation pick-up service.
The current trash pick-up system utilizes garbage trucks with two drivers who pickup waste that is not recyclable.
The single-driver system would entail the purchase of three new trucks at a cost of $250,000 each. The trucks use an “arm” that is remotely controlled by the driver. Also, each household in Mason City would need a special container. Those cost $68.36 each and there would be 10,000 of those needed. Both expenses would be picked up by the city. $1,433,600 would be the capitol outlay to make the transition from the current two-person system to the single-driver system. All trash containers would need to be placed curbside; no trash would be collected in alleys.
According to a memo from City Administrator Brent Trout, “the advantages of the single arm pickup relate primarily to personnel costs.” Trout claims that worker’s compensation costs would decline per employee, while eluding to the fact that less sanitation workers would be needed. He also claims that alleys would need less maintenance since the trucks would not be on them anymore.
Trout projects in his memo that sanitation rates in the city would need to be hiked in the range from 86 cents to $1.77 per month per household. Trout states in his memo that “rates are not likely to ever go down” once they are raised.
Bookmeyer will screw this up royally and the counciil will back him….and as someone said; seven families will lose their income. One more reason to vote.
Complaining on here and voicing your opinion is all well and good. But unless you ALL show up at the city council meetings and voice your concerns over this matter and let your leadership know EXACTLY how you feel, what is the point of complaining then? Complaining on here will do all of you no good!
The city would no longer be able to reject garbage under this system. Old pc monitors, tv parts and things like this will be trown in these cans and nobody will know the difference, it will all go to the landfill. How are they going to regulate that when nobody looks at it? why recycle when you can just dumb it?