Suwanee Trash Committee Meeting
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Maybe sixty people (11 of them Committee members) joined Commissioner Mike Beaudreau at George Pierce Park on February 12th to discuss the Gwinnett County Trash Plan. The audience that turned out appeared to be made up mostly of retired citizens – most of them looked to be over 60 years old.The meeting had two parts. The first portion consisted of about 45 minutes where the Committee listened to comments from those in attendance. People were called on and given two minutes to address the group. The second portion consisted of the Committee hearing a short presentation and then getting together to discuss the trash issue among themselves.
At the opening of the meeting, Committee Chair Mike Royal announced that the purpose of these meetings was for the Committee to gather recommendations and present them to the Gwinnett Board of Commissioners. He said that while they did not have to, the Board should listen to these recommendations because this Committee is made up of “people they know”. But he admitted that the County is under no obligation to take any of their suggestions.
The main issues that were brought up by the audience were:
- Don’t put any trash collection fee on the tax bill. This point was brought up a number of times during the evening and clearly was the most important to the audience.
- Get a better price. One resident said that his 101 home subdivision had negotiated a rate with a single hauler which was 20% lower than rate the County negotiated for 180,000 residents. They also said they enjoyed having the single hauler, although they still had 3 trucks come through their neighborhood.
- Provide smaller bin options. Older people and people living alone do not need one, much less two, 95 gallon containers, and many town home residents do not have room to keep the large bin and their car in the same garage.
- Give business to GA companies. The idea that the County would go outside the state to hire a company does not make any sense.
- Allow residents to opt out. The owner of small business wants to continue to use their dumpster which they pay for already, and people who only live in a home part time don’t want to pay for 12 months of service.
- Why fix what is not broken? The system we have now seems to be working fine and there is no need for additional government encroachment into our lives.
- If the County takes over residents can’t keep rates from increasing.
- We need a choice of haulers. If a subdivision only wants one hauler in their neighborhood they can negotiate that deal right now without any mandates from the County.
Most of these meetings are very much the same, but this particular one had two interesting events that you don’t see often. The most unusual came from a very, very angry lady from Norcross. As each resident began their two minute comment the Committee asked that they state their name and where they were from. This particular resident refused to give her name, and when pressed said to just call her ‘mom’. She became quite belligerent, and was yelling about problems she had with trash, gangs, and whatever else she could think of. When the Chairman told her that her time was up she screamed that the Committee took her time by trying to force her to give her name and continued her tirade. Security was called but did not arrive until after the lady had slipped from the meeting.
The second memorable highlight came when Committee Chair Mike Royal literally fell out of his chair and almost pulled the table down with him. The kind of thing you see on YouTube, but unfortunately nobody had a video camera.
The Committee made very few comments during the meeting, and did not really address any of the residents directly. Commissioner Mike Beaudreau did make a few statements at the end of the public comment period, explaining that the previous plan (now called, for lack of a better term, the “old new plan”) had a provision to fix the rate for two years and it would not be raised without a re-bid. He also stated (although it was not brought up at this meeting) that there was no fine for people who did not recycle.
The Commission will have their next public meeting on February 23, and will have a special meeting later for just the haulers where they will discuss the suggestions they have received from County residents.
[...] Suwanee Trash Committee Meeting [...]
David:
I will agree that the ordinance never used the word “mandatory”, it did say all residents “SHALL recycle”. According to dictionary when shall is used in legal reference it means “must do”. Why can he not man up and admit this issue?
David,
Good article and thanks for posting it.
Will be interesting to see if anything comes from this in the end and if the county will pay attention to this committee. The non-optimist in me says they won’t and this is just window dressing to try to be able to just point to this as there being citizen involvement 9 months from now when they try to do what they want anyway.
Here’s hoping the Big 5 will prove me wrong.
David,
Thanks for attending and providing you accurate account of the meeting. Just to ad a bit of additional info….
The meeting with the haulers will be at a three hour long meeting on March 2 at GJAC. The meeting will start at 6:00 and the first 1 1/2 hours will be for committee to gather info from the haulers. The public is welcome to attend this portion of the meeting. Many residents have asked for a later meeting time as they can’t make a 6:30 start meeting. The public comments portion of this 3-2-09 meeting will begin at aprox. 7:30 and go until the scheduled conclusion at 9:00.
BTW the 2-23 meeting will be at Mountain Park.
The committee elected to hold our comments to a minimum during the time that was provided to the public so that as many citizens as possible could speak their peace. I have about 9 pages of notes that I have taken along with having the meeting minutes to refer to.
Again, thanks for attending and helping to get the word out regarding future meetings.
Mack
Let’s straighten out a few things.
The committee is there to have the citizens speak out not to make comments. We tried the other way at the first meeting but agreed that then it turns into a debate.
As DS points out the ordinance does use the term “shall” and may have to be reworded.
I don’t know what GwinnettView refers to in “when they try to do what they want anyway”. The committee is mainly hearing the people who disagree with the plan at the meetings but what about the people who agree who don’t feel the need to come out and say they do since the BoC already made a commitment to follow through with the plan. Is the committee supposed to just report about the anti-plan commenters or about ways to improve the plan that was proposed given a little more time to work out some issues the public has brought up.
The last meeting of the committee is scheduled for March 2nd in the auditorium at GJAC starting at 6:00PM. The haulers will have the floor for the first 45 minutes, followed by the citizens for 45 minutes and then the committee members will discuss the findings and make recommendations to be presented to the BoC.
I will assume from one of your comments that you are a committee member and so have been to at least some of the meetings. If so then you know that in their statements to the committee many people agreed with some of the purposes of the plan but took issue with some of the methods. But I am not going to assume that because people did not turn out to a meeting that they are in favor of the County plan – this would mean that only a very, very small percent of the population is opposed and nobody believes that to be the case.
Either way I think the County is about to have one of those “out of the frying pan and into the fire” moments as people tire of the trash debate and the information about tax increases begins to be discussed…
I was referring to the BOC not the committee…
My point was this: Will the BOC actually listen to the recommendations of this committee? I would hope so but only time will tell.
Of course people are upset and the people who are upset are the ones the committee is going to hear the most from during this. I think the committee is willing to hear the good and the bad of the most recent plans and come up with a comprehensive recommendation. There are some smart people involved. But at the end of the day having the BOC actually listen and pay attention to a committee they won’t even sanction will be something that will be worth watching.
I agree that that the problem with the plan was the execution or methods as you described some members of the public commenting on. The only issues in the lawsuit was that the BoC should not have given administrative authority to GC&B and over how the bidding was done with the bidders being told to bid on one or more of the eight proposed districts. Then when the bids came in and two of the bidders were much lower than the others a decision was made to award the work to the two lowest bidders dividng the county into six districts in an effort to keep the costs low compared to having two higher bidders take the other two districts. Both decisions that were the basis of the suit have merit as the judge determined. No one questioned having one hauler per district.
It would be wrong to assume because the number of people at the meetings being against the plan that the general public is or isn’t. It’s the nature of the beast that people who feel threatened will come out in force while those in support don’t feel the need to. That being said the committee has heard the opoosition and have not discounted it by any means.
Yes I am a committee member as is Mack. The last meeting should be most enlightening. The auditiorium holds several hundred people so all are welcome. It might be good for the committee to hear more people in support of the plan to get a more balanced feel as most of the citizens speaking up have been opposed for various reasons.
Art is correct in that no one questioned the one hauler per district. The questions that the GC&B survey asked were loaded in favor of one hauler per district. I was in favor of limiting the number of trucks in my neighborhood for selfish reasons, I just didn’t want as many trucks on that many days. After hearing the comments from the citizens of Gwinnett County both at these public meetings and through emails and phone calls that I have received, I have changed my selfish opinion and will support citizens having a choice of their hauler. After all if a hauler does not perform to the standards that I as a consumer expect, then I have the right to fire them and hire a different hauler.
There is some validity to the statement that “people who feel threatened will come out in force while those in support don’t feel the need to”. That being said I would like to hear from at least a few who support “the plan”.
As Art stated, Monday night is the final meeting of the committee. The agenda is to hear from the haulers first, then from the citizens and finally to formulate a recommendation to Commissioner Beaudreau for him to share with the Board of Commissioners. FYI, committee members submitted questions for the haulers at the end of last week. I urge everyone, either for or against the adjoined plan, to attend this meeting and voice your opinion.