THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 29, 1995 TAG: 9509280159
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
The City Council on Tuesday shot down efforts by Oceanfront business operators to continue daily municipal trash hauls in the resort area for at least two more years.
A split vote of the council doomed the bid to continue a city service that extends back to the early 1960s.
Councilman Linwood O. Branch III, who had what could have been a swing vote on the issue, disqualified himself from balloting because - as a resort hotel operator - he wanted to avoid violating the state conflict of interest law.
Municipal trash hauls for 150 of the 600 resort businesses will be allowed to continue through the end of January. At that time merchants and innkeepers will have to make their own arrangements for private pickups, either through a single franchised contractor or through separate private contractors.
The council action followed pleas from resort business leaders Henry Richardson and Rick Anoia to maintain city services for two more years. The time extension would enable all Oceanfront businesses to sign on with a single hauling company. Some businesses must honor contracts that don't expire until the next year or two, Vice Mayor William D. Sessoms explained.
Resort merchants offered two arguments for continuing the city service for two more years.
First, the city has spent $40 million so far in beautifying Atlantic Avenue and its side streets and should protect that investment by continuing what has been an efficient, clean municipal trash service.
Second, the two-year extension would allow resort business leaders to sign up all 600 fellow merchants with a single trash hauling service under a city approved franchise.
Allowing multiple commercial trash haulers to collect oceanfront refuse would create traffic, health and hygiene problems that most certainly would offend tourists, argued Anoia, chairman of the Resort Leadership Council. The leadership council is a lobbying group representing a cross section of Oceanfront business interests.
``We hope to maintain the integrity of the Oceanfront by continuing the service for two more years,'' added Richardson, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association. ``We look to our city to control elements we can't control.''
But council members like Barbara M. Henley and Louis R. Jones questioned the fairness of continuing a city trash hauling service for a handful of resort businesses that is not available to other city businesses, including the 450 in the resort district that now pay for private haulers.
The Oceanfront service costs an estimated $416,000, according to the city administration.
As understood by Richardson, Anoia and Sessoms, the agreement with the city called for resort businesses to pay for a third of the cost the first year, two-thirds the second year and the full cost at the end of the third year before going to a franchised contractor.
However, not all council members recall making such an agreement. Said Jones, ``I'm not going to support the motion (to continue the hauling service) because that was not my understanding of the agreement - it was to be continued for only a year.''
Hoteliers vainly argued that they have been paying extra for municipal trash collections since 1964 through a 1 percent sales tax, a levy not required of any other businesses in the city.
Nevertheless Jones, Henley and council members Nancy K. Parker, Robert K. Dean and John A. Baum voted against a two-year continuation of the service. Voting for it were Mayor Meyera Oberndorf, Sessoms and council members W.W. Harrison Jr., Harold Heischober and Louisa M. Strayhorn.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH OCEANFRONT GARBAGE TRASH by CNB