THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 22, 1995 TAG: 9509210169
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
The City Council may decide as early as next Tuesday to replace a city-operated trash pickup service in the resort business district with a single private hauler or to leave it to individual merchants to hire their own.
A straw poll this week among council members attending an informal meeting indicates that they're likely to ask resort business operators to make their own arrangements, but with some stipulations.
Those stipulations likely would require strict daily city inspections to make sure private haulers do their work early in the day and keep the recently renovated resort district clean and odor free.
No matter what the choice may be, one thing is certain: the city intends to get out of the commercial trash hauling business by early December.
So far 150 of the 300 Oceanfront businesses still have their refuse picked up daily in summer months by city crews at a cost of $416,000 annually, council members were told Tuesday by Art Shaw, operations engineer for the city's Public Works Department.
The remainder have hired an assortment of private contractors to collect trash daily during the summer.
Two surveys of resort merchants in the past year have produced inconclusive results about their preference for single or multiple private hauling services for the Oceanfront.
Going into the meeting Tuesday, the city staff recommended a single hauler to serve all 300 resort businesses, but this option probably will meet stiff opposition from council members like Louis R. Jones, who fears unionization of one contracting service.
``My concern,'' Jones said Tuesday ``- from experience in other cities - is the union situation. They could go out on strike and the city would have to pick up the garbage. I don't see a franchise as a viable system. Either the city continues to do it or everybody has private service.''
Ironically, resort trash collection is one municipal service that has brought rave reviews from the city's fractious and hard-to-please resort business operators.
Almost unanimously, they agree that city trash pickup - especially during the tourist season - is quick, reliable, efficient and clean.
It also is expensive and that is one reason why the council decided in 1993 to discontinue all commercial trash hauls in the city.
Councilman Robert K. Dean offered a fourth option Tuesday, suggesting that resort hoteliers, restaurant operators and shopkeepers form a trash hauling co-op.
``They could pool capital, buy their own trucks and recoup their money from recycling, '' he said. ``And they would oversee their own service.''
Dean noted the most obvious argument against continued city hauling: Resort businesses are the only ones in the city that receive the municipal trash hauling service.
KEYWORDS: TRASH PICKUP OCEANFRONT by CNB