THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210135
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
City innkeepers have until Jan. 31 to decide when and how trash will be hauled out of the resort strip, and they are scrambling to come up with a solution that will be efficient, clean and equitable.
At a meeting Thursday of the Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association, president Henry Richardson sounded out members about hiring a single contractor to do the job - especially in summer months.
A subcommittee of the association is trying to identify private haulers who may be interested in taking on the job.
``It's unfortunate that we don't have the city service,'' Richardson told members, ``since we taxed ourselves for it - long before I was in this business. But we don't win all our battles. We did our best.''
Richardson was referring to a tie vote on the council last month that doomed an extension of the city trash collection service for at least another year.
City administrators recommended that the service be discontinued, citing expense and fairness as their reasons. Cost to the city to pickup resort business refuse is $426,000 a year, according to Public Works budget figures. Of the 20,000 businesses citywide and 400 in the resort area, only 190 availed themselves of municipal trash hauling services. The rest have hired private services to do the job.
City innkeepers have argued vainly that they have been paying for city trash hauling through a special tax levy that took effect in the mid-1960s and should not have to pay more for the service.
They also contend that the city service is the most efficient and cleanest of any operating at the Oceanfront and should be continued to preserve the ``aesthetics'' of the resort district, which has been undergoing a $40 million face lift for 10 years.
The smell of unemptied dumpsters and the sight of uncollected litter could drive tourists away, Richardson and fellow innkeepers contend.
``One pickup a week is not enough,'' he said.
The arguments, however, have fallen on deaf ears in City Council chambers. Innkeepers, as well as resort restaurant owners and shop keepers, now will have to decide whether to hire a single private contractor to do what the city has done for more than 30 years, or hire a number of individual haulers.
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.
The city staff has recommended a single hauler to serve all 400 resort businesses, but this option met with opposition from council members like Louis R. Jones, who fears unionization of one contracting service. by CNB