Be a roving reporter!  Send us your pictures!  We'll publish them here. Send them to uapetition@aol.com.

New News is Here!

Click a button below for older news.

                                                    

February 17, 2009

A great letter in the UA News today ... click below here to read it.



It seems that the city will be discontinuing the recycling program for those with medical exemptions. 
Listen to the Assistant City Manager tell Council:



Transcript:

"We currently provide this service for a little over 300 residents whose mobility is impaired.  Our agreement with Inland covers 200 households in the medical exemption program and so we have been covering the other little over 100 folks with solid waste workers who were approaching their retirement date as we concluded that contract.

As we entered the second year, we no longer have that option.  All of the solid waste workers are gone or will be gone by the time the second contract, second year, comes into play."  

Is this true?  Yes and no.

The contract with Inland does indeed include picking up trash from 200 medical exemption households.  The city pays Inland $15,000 per year for them to pick up the trash of the additional 100.
 
The contract does NOT SAY ANYTHING about picking up recyclables from the medical exemptions because the city FORGOT to put it in!  In May of 2008, Inland quoted the city $210 per stream per household per year, which would be an additional $120,000 that the city would have to pay.

So from Day 1 of the new service last April, city employees have been picking up medical exemption recyclables.  The Assistant City Manager implies that it's been done by ex-solid waste workers who we would have paid anyways because they were on the payroll until their retirement date, and they'll be gone by the time the next year's contract kicks in.

Is this true?  

No.  The last retirement date for any of the workers took place LAST FALL.  The city has kept at least two personnel on staff (the two with combined annual salaries of at least $100,000 per year) to go around and collect the medical exemption recyclables.  One of them was spotted picking up medical recyclables just last week!


Their mistake has cost us residents dearly, and the city is using the "current economic conditions" as as an excuse for slithering out of the commitments they made to those with medical exemptions.  

 Click below to read the ThisWeek article from February 10.



So ... Did we save money with this new service?

NOPE!

The projected cost with the old service was $2.2 million.

How much did the city spend in 2008 on solid waste?

$2.5 million!

This includes approximately $350,000 in the severance package for the old solid waste workers.  So even excluding that, the cost was the same.  For LESS SERVICE.

We told you a year ago ... the new contract with Inland would end up costing more than using city employees even with the lowered level of service. 

They claimed it would save us $5 million over 5 years. 
Uhhh ... I think not.
Great job at wasting our tax dollars, city staff! 
What's your next brilliant idea?