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NORWALK, Conn. – Two City Carting trucks passed Tuesday morning on Norwalk's Soundview Avenue, an unheard of occurrence until Monday.
The company is now picking up Norwalk's garbage in addition to recycling materials, as the 10-year-contract authorized by the Common Council in July became effective Oct. 1. The switch will save Norwalk $855,328 in its first full year, city officials say.
It's going well, Department of Public Works Director Hal Alvord said. "City Carting is doing a fantastic job," he said. "Very efficient. There are some streets where people either didn't see the memos or didn't know what day their recycling was on and they've got garbage out," he said.
"So we're dealing with that on an individual basis, reminding them what day their pickup is. But it's about as expected."
He attributed the smooth rollout to time spent in planning, including City Carting drivers doing dry runs. "They've got supervisors following their trucks this week just to make sure they're not missing anything," he said.
Larry Dorman, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, had a different take on the situation, as the eight city employees who had been picking up garbage have been reassigned. Two are drivers and six are laborers.
"Our members who worked in refuse will suffer significant pay cuts because of the greed of public works management and the mayor in hiring City Carting," he said. "The taxpayers, we think, will pay a price as well. They're being asked to underwrite City Carting's operation.
"The city is providing the equipment and infrastructure to make it easier for City Carting. We don't think it's in the interest of the workers, and we certainly don't think it's going to be in the interest long term of the residents."
Comments (31)
Well Tim T.
Be original and stop stealing my lines that I used on you.
I know you are simple minded and like to repeat yourself and use the lines of others but get real!!
(Here comes the cut and paste)
As far as city carting goes, all I'm saying is they don't empty the bins out all the way. This is not just at my house, this happens at a few house on my street. I also know people who live on the other side of town that have the same issues.
Also throwing the bins where ever they want and cracking them is another issue I have. If you want cheaper that's what you'll get cheaper. Guys who get paid less and don't care!
I'd rather see my street clean and not have to buy a recycling bin every year.
mkbocc
IT sounds as if you are one of the garbage men that have been replaced.
Nope not a garbage man. Just tired of cleaning up after people
AMEN!!!
Yes AMEN!!! that Romney has all but lost.......LOOKS LIKE AN OBAMA LANDSLIDE..
As a resident of Norwalk who does not have garbage collection included in what he receives in return for paying his taxes (or city water, or city sewers), I say be happy for what you are getting. I have used City Carting for several years for our garbage collection and find their work to be excellent!
there will be an increase in our tax bills..remember the "sewer tax"? And, they will "issue" ONE garbage can per family...most households have 3-4 cans...what will happen with all that extra garbage that those can wont fit? I am ashamed of the city for allowing this to happen.
Are you kidding??? Who generates that much garbage? We barely fill a tall kitchen can each week. We emit <30 liters, or less than 1/5th of the single 65 gallon mini-dumpster.
Sure we put out a lot of recycling, mostly junk-mail by weight, plastic milk jugs, steel ("tin") cans, a few glass jars -- but NO water bottles!!! Norwalk City water is actually better than most bottled water anyway.
IMHO, if a household can afford to generate that much garbage, then it can afford private garbage pickup to take it away!
Q.E.D.
We'll see.
City Carting will probably do a good job collecting garbage. There is a plan for them to issue 65 gallon heavy duty plastic cans with wheels, designed to be picked up and dumped by a device on the trucks. Once that happens, they won't need three-man crews. I believe they have them already and will start using them soon.
They have already cut down on the number of downtown pickups, and we will see other ways to manage costs that the City could have done and didn't.. Somebody at City Hall has been committed to outsourcing garbage collection and cutting union jobs for a long time. The union did not do much of a job protecting those jobs. What union jobs will be next ? Does anybody really believe we will see any savings in our tax bills ?
Old Timer
I believe it was stated at the public meetings on this subject that the 65 gallon heavy duty plastic cans are for single-stream recycling, not for garbage.
As for the savings, you're right - we'll see. The City administration has gone out on a limb by providing detailed spreadsheets showing cost projections and estimated savings. The opponents of outsourcing, by contrast, did no such thing, and failed to refute any of the savings or provide a plan of their own to save the City money. I'm looking forward to an objective analysis once we're a year or two into the new contract.
What do you think single-stream recycling is ? Everything goes in one container and the stuff worth pulling out gets pulled out on the tipping floor. The seperate recycling collection disappears and is replaced by the tipping floor sorting. Another huge labor cost savings for City Carting kicks in. I don't know the details of the new ten year recycling contract, but the claim is made that more gets recycled this way. The amount that gets trucked away goes down, and the income from recycling goes up. The net effect is lower cost to haul garbage out of town and more income from recycling. The trick will be in the details of monitoring what money goes where. Even if the City saves, City Carting, (and their closest friends ?) will profit enormously, and taxes will NOT go down.
Old Timer,
I believe you are mistaken when you say that separate recycling collection disappears if single stream recycling is introduced. Single stream recycling simply means that instead of putting plastic/glass into the blue bin and paper/cardboard into other containers, ALL the recyclable products go into one big bin which is still completely separate from garbage.
One benefit of single-stream recycling is that when you don't require people to maintain separate piles for each recyclable item, they recycle MORE than they otherwise would. THAT'S where savings are generated, and according to comments made by the administration on the record - as opposed to wild speculation made in the comments section of a news web site - those savings accrue directly to the City, not to City Carting.
It's simply not true that recyclables and garbage all get commingled under single stream recycling, with the recyclables sorted out after collection. The recyclables are still collected separately and then I believe the individual classes of recyclable (paper, glass, plastic) are separated by machine.
For more on single-stream recycling, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_stream_recycling
Don't take my word for it. Check with City Carting customers who pay for collection or garbage dumpster service. Seperate containers for cans, bottles, glass and paper are no longer being used. Everything get mixed and the stuff worth seperating, gets seperated on the tipping floor.
Your original comment read like it was stating that recycling and garbage would no longer be picked up separately. Perhaps that's not what you meant, perhaps you meant that there's a huge labor savings because workers are only lifting one large can rather than several smaller ones at each stop. In any case, I look forward to an analysis of performance a year or two into the contract to see what savings the City has achieved.
That is exactly what I meant. One truck, one stop does it all. I suggested you check with City Carting customers with dumpster service. The seperate containers for can, bottles, etc. went away quite a while ago.
An honest analysis on savings should be interesting, but will only reflect amounts the City is paying. City Carting will impose efficiencies that will save money for them and, in many cases, impose private collection fees on people who have not had to pay in the past. Those numbers will not be published, but will be considerable.
What you say is contrary to everything that was said at public meetings and published in numerous newspaper articles. Do you really believe that going forward, recycling will just be dumped into existing garbage cans, and then somehow separated from regular garbage at the transfer station? That sounds incredibly labor intensive, not to mention impossible.
Single stream recycling means you have ONE recycling container for all recyclables - glass, paper, cans, cardboard. But the container is for recyclables only, not regular garbage.
If it saves the taxpayers $ then I'm all for City Carting taking over. Free garbage/recycling pick-up and beach stickers are the only things I get for my enormous taxes I pay to this city.
I don't agree with the "memo" I received a couple weeks ago. Trash has to be in cans with lids ect...... I don't know how many times I have had to buy a new recycling bin from it being thrown where ever it lands is where I had to retrieve it from. If I have to keep purchasing garbage cans because they are being thrown around the same way and being damaged like the lid is missing or thrown in the street and ran over or cracks down the side of the cans well I agree our streets will be filled with crap. There are a set of strict rules on that memo, if that's the case why aren't we provided garbage cans and recycling cans like other towns?
You don't agree? Garbage needs to be put in a can. If you leave bags or boxes it attracts rats, etc. Everyone buys their own cans - so they have a choice. If the "city" provided that stuff, who do you think would be paying for it? No one would be happy and everyone would have to pay more. You have a choice within a very reasonable set of rules.
No I don't agree because if they can't be a little more considerate then I would much rather have cans provided seeing I am paying for everything else not necessary so why not have cans provided. Why do I need to keep replacing bins & cans when it's not all that hard to empty the can and put it down. They don't have to be thrown the way they are. I'm sure everyone has had to chase their cans & bins at one time or another or have to swerve to miss hitting a can because it's in the road. It gets annoying week after week and let's not forget to mention when garbage is dropped by the workers or trucks do you see them picking it up? I'm not saying they aren't doing their job, I'm just saying I'm tired of replacing these items on a regular basis they could be more considerate.
Recycling crews have busted my recycling bins more than once. I have called the city and had them replaced. Simple! But I agree... they don't need to throw our cans or our bins! I wouldn't want to try to get them to replace a garbage can... but the recycling bins are much more brittle plastic and I don't see the point using them if they are destroyed so easily and then land in a recycling bin themselves.
2 issues. First, buy your own can, simple. The second, if someone destroyed your garbage can...congratulations, they aren't going to be throwing them around any more, because this company is only on their third day, so it certainly wasn't them.
I have lived here 42 years and every once in a while yes, a recycling bin gets blown in the street or it was tossed incorrectly. Pick it up. No one is perfect and its obvious that it is isolated and you certainly don't know how it happened to be pointing fingers.
You are missing the point. They sucked at picking up our recycling, do you think they will be any better collecting our garbage? The town is cutting budgets in every department but where they should actually be cut. So if providing the paying residents a can or two is a $$ issue then instead of cutting our child's education, why don't they cut out the mayor's car we are paying for or cut the officers pay instead because we are paying for them to drop off their dry cleaning or sit in a parking lot reading the paper or better yet sit in their car on the phone at a construction site instead of directing traffic like they should be and maybe take a little of that cut money and provide garbage and recycling bins.
lexxiesmom02
One thing you forgot to add in regard to this "sit in a parking lot reading the paper or better yet sit in their car on the phone at a construction site instead of directing traffic like they should be"
ITS AT OVERTIME RATE....TALK ABOUT A WASTE OF MONEY..It seems our police department get overtime rate more than straight time..
THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE AND CHANGE NOW.
Priceless quotes from Union spokesman Larry Dorman:
"Our members who worked in refuse will suffer significant pay cuts because of the greed of public works management and the mayor in hiring City Carting," he said.
Please, Mr. Mayor and Public Works Management, be MORE "greedy" when it comes to making our tax dollars stretch farther. If this means that municipal employee unions have to go without a raise for a few years, and a few have to take a pay cut here and there, so be it. Act like it's your own money that you're spending when it's time to negotiate.
"We don't think it's in the interest of the workers, and we certainly don't think it's going to be in the interest long term of the residents."
Notice how twice in a row Mr. Dorman mentions the workers before the residents. The reason for that, of course, is that his full-time job is to extract as much as possible from us taxpayers for his Union members.
If you took the hit they did on your salary, you would probably have unkind things to say, too. From their point of view they were badly treated and took a bit more than a simple pay cut. There was no real effort, they say, to negotiate any significant savings in their contract. They are convinced the City was hell-bent on outsourcing their jobs, and not much interested in negotiating cost saving efficiencies into the contract. We will never know if management could have achieved as good or better savings with a good faith effort and we are waiting hopefully to see where all that money saved ends up. Not really expecting a savings on tax bills.
It's a shame that eight guys took an $8,000 pay cut, but if the savings of $1 million per year are real, then it's an unavoidable necessity for the greater good. None of the workers affected lost jobs, PLUS they got a lumpsum payment which I believe keeps them whole on salary for 12 months from the time that the pay reduction went into effect. If their skills are truly worth $8,000 more than they're currently being paid, they have 12 months to find jobs elsewhere which pay that sum. If they can't, then it's a sign that the City was in fact overpaying.
The reason we can't expect lower tax bills from garbage outsourcing is that the $1 million in yearly savings is more than cancelled out by rising labor and pension costs for other City municipal union employees. What we can expect are tax bills that don't have to go up as much as they otherwise would have.
Well if they pick up the garbage the way they pick up the recycling in east Norwalk then we are all in trouble!!
These guys don't even empty the recycling bins all the way and leave crap all over the streets!!
Happens every Wednesday on my street!!
I don't think any of them care.
Maybe with the supervisors following the garbage trucks around they can see how bad the recycling guys are!!!
Wow...do you really think anyone is going to buy this? We all live in this town and we all see that the company does a reasonable job. For once I agree with Tim
Tim didn't say anything about City Carting for anybody to agree with. He made another complaint about the police not working hard enough for overtime, with no information about what those cops did the first eight hours before that construction job. He is entitled to that opinion, this is the wrong place for it. Don't be too surprized if the City gets much tougher with the unions after it was so easy this time. Other cities are outsourcing police service, it could happen here, if enough Tim's support the idea and it can be made to look like a big savings. A lot of military service was outsourced to "contractors". I wonder if we will ever get real numbers on how much that saved taxpayers. It made some people very wealthy.
mkbocc,
City Carting has picked up my recycling for years and I've never noticed my bin or that of any neighbors not being emptied all the way. Sounds like you should call the City's Customer Service Line at (203) 854-3200 to lodge a complaint.