Garbage (in more than one sense of the word)

For the past 12 years that we have lived in Gwinnett County, we have had the choice of several different sanitation companies to use for picking up our trash.

About a year ago, I learned of a plan by the County Board of Commissioners to divide the county into eight zones and award the trash service for those zones to competitive bidders. Initially, the plan was to award no more than three zones to any one bidder. Also important to note, this plan was conceived and put into place by the Board of Commissioners and was never voted on by the citizens of the county AND the plan is for a private, non-governmental agency (non-profit corporation) to run the whole thing. Something I forgot to put in earlier - normally, there is a $150,000 performance bond required for a business to operate and respond to these bids. However, on these contracts, the County upped the requirement to $2M, which effectively prevents smaller businesses from bidding on the contracts because they cannot afford a $2M performance bond.

About a month ago, we received a letter from our new sanitation company, informing us about the terms of the new service. A week or so ago, we received our first bill for the service, which is a few dollars higher than we are currently paying. We will have to pay for the service out of pocket for the first six months, then it will be added into our property tax bill.

Sometime during the process of putting this plan into place, they changed it by reducing the number of zones from 8 to 6. Then when contracts were awarded, only two sanitation companies received contracts, and both of these companies are out of Florida.

In the meantime, two of the sanitation companies that are effectively being run out of business by this plan have challenged the whole thing in court, seeking an injunction to stop the new plan. I just learned this morning that the challenge has been successful and the judge did decide to put an injunction in place against this plan.

I am in favor of the injunction because I am opposed to not having a choice in this matter and I am also concerned that this plan was put in place without being voted on by the citizens of the County. On the other hand, I'm wondering what happens in two weeks - who is going to be picking up our trash? Anyone? Are we even going to still have a trash can (currently provided by the sanitation company) or will that be picked up and we'll be left with nothing?

Trash pickup is something I've always kind of taken for granted and just always assumed would be there. Never gave it much thought. Now the thought of trash possibly piling up and having nowhere for it go is kind of daunting.

Another good reason to move somewhere else!