During the most recent Long Beach City budget hearings, I wrote of the importance of what core services mean to not only those who are employed by our city but—just as importantly—those of us who live and work here. One of the most important operations within our city’s structure is public works, to include the massive employee effort and equipment dedicated to trash collection and disposal. I spoke of how critically important it is to the quality of life that we as taxpayers demand and deserve when we pay all of the taxes and fees our city collects. In other words, when we put out our trash, garbage, and recyclables, we expect it to all get picked up.
So now there’s a strike where the private haulers have walked off the job. This is not a good thing, but it does demonstrate why outsourcing trash collection has catastrophic potential. Imagine totally contracting out for these services, dismantling our city’s entire fleet of trash trucks, and feeling secure that our trash containers will get picked up when we roll them out.
I’m sure that the private sector management overseeing the existing contract for picking up recyclables and trash for commercial and industrial sites are not happy. If I were one of their customers, I’d be furious too.
Long Beach has one of the most efficient and technologically advanced trash and trash-to-energy systems statewide. Actually, we’re the envy of our big sister city Los Angeles. They missed the entire boat when they decided to dedicate their method of trash disposal to sanitary landfills instead of incinerating waste to create electricity.
There’s a lesson to be learned regarding the notion that contracting out doesn’t come with the potential for problems. The current strike is just one big example, let’s hope it’s settled quickly but also not forget what’s happening now could have translated into a massive problem for our city if we eliminated one of the most critical parts of our city’s operations—that is, totally outsourced citywide trash collection.