Curmudgeon's Corner

Village Buzz - September 12th...

Posted by Al Campbell on Sept. 12, 2008

Germantown, Quality of Life, Village Board, Village Buzz

Flogging A Deceased Equine? 

The Village Board agenda for Monday, September 15th includes another discussion on the Waste Management agreement.   This is as the result of the Board's direction to staff during the special meeting of a week or so ago.

The special meeting resulted in a sound reaffirmation that the current Waste Management agreement should be left as is unless and until something changed dramatically enough to warrant more consideration.  During that meeting, it was indicated that calls had been received but no one had been tracking those calls.  The Village Administrator advised then that the responsible person would begin to gather specifics.

The anecdotal discussion points seemed to indicate that, while there may have been some disruption caused by the strike of Teamsters against Waste Management, any disruption seemed well within the 'five day' delay language of the current agreement.

President Kempinski has told me that his actions were intended to be proactive and that he and the Administrator had held conversations with Veolia, the other company that tendered a bid for Germantown's business when Waste Management was selected.  I questioned whether or not he hoped to bring some pressure to bear on Waste Management.  He said that while he was thinking of the citizens, he did hope to apply some pressure although he was not concerned with the outcome of the Teamsters' strike.

As we look forward to the next regular meeting, my question is: "What has changed since the last consideration?"

My experience before was a one day delay at the worst.  We are on  Friday pick-up schedule and my garbage was picked up at 6:05AM this morning (Friday).  That was followed by the recycle pick-up about 30 minutes later.  From my perspective, the "what has changed" question is answered by stating..."it's back to normal".

So far as I can determine, based on an email exchange with Dave Schornack, Village Administrator, there have been no more complaints to him, and two had been logged by the Public Works department.  As was my experience, Schornack indicates that his pick-ups occurred on the regular day this past week, as well.

I have heard other anecdotal complaints about people in condominiums experiencing delays.  Those I've looked into were apparently condominium association agreements for pick-up and not violations of the village agreement.

While President Kempinski has told me that he has no interest in the outcome of the Teamster strike against Waste Management, he also indicated that he did want to bring pressure on Waste Management to assure that Germantown citizens got what they and the village were paying for.

It strikes me that this is, whether intentional or unintentional, a "perfect storm" in that it accomplishes both the satisfaction of the agreement and application of more pressure to Waste Management as labor decides whether or not to put the latest offer to a vote by membership.  There is a very significant issue involved and teamsters are very sensitive to it.  The Central States Fund operated on behalf of Teamsters to provide pension benefits has had some problems and there is a fear that, if proposals such as that made by Waste Management are approved, there could well be a 'run' on that fund with other employers trying to pull out.  That could leave the Fund under-funded thus threatening pension benefits unless employer contributions were increased to offset the shortfall.

So, let us hope that we don't see this on the agenda after Monday evening unless there is a reason.