Petition for Once-a-Week Trash Pickup in Rockville

Posted August 25, 2007
The issue of how, and how often, to pick up trash in our neighborhoods has been under debate for the past several months. The City Council voted in July, after a contentious debate, to end the highly successful once-a-week trash pilot program and provide city-wide twice-a-week trash collection. Many of us feel this is an inefficient and costly solution that takes into account neither the 93% satisfaction rate reported by pilot program participants nor the extra environmental and financial burden such a plan imposes. Art Stigile and other residents of the neighborhoods where the pilot was carried out have been lobbying hard over the past few months for the City to maintain the once-a-week pickup successfully employed during the pilot, or at the very least offer a once-a-week option for those who feel twice-a-week pickup is a wasteful and unnecessary expense.

If you'd rather have your City tax dollars going to something more beneficial, we invite you to fill out the petition below, which will be sent to Art Stigile, head of RockTrash.org to be forwarded to the City when the Council returns from recess in September. Below the petition is a post I made in the greenpages at this site last February, with some relevant links.

(Sept 19, 2007: Petitions have now been delivered. Thanks to everyone who sent one in. Hopefully we'll take this issue up again after the November elections.)

For a list of frequently asked questions and responses on the subject, see the FAQ page at RockTrash.

Posting from February 7, 2007

On February 20, the City of Rockville will hold a public hearing on what changes to implement in the current twice-weekly garbage collection. For the past two years, the City has been studying and discussing possible changes to the garbage collection system, which has been operating in the red for years, reaching a deficit of over $150,000 by the end of fiscal 2006.

As an alternative to the current situation, which is estimated to cost $61/mo per household by 2020, the City studied a plan for automated pickup once a week, estimated to cost $47/mo instead (chart of differences shown here). To test the new once-a-week automated system of garbage collection (as opposed to the current system of non-automated curbside pickup), a nine-month, 780-household pilot program was carried out in the Monument and Hungerford neighborhoods. As reported in The Gazette, Out of more than 350 surveys returned from the pilot area, 82 percent support citywide implementation, with just 6 percent opposed.

We agree with Mayor Giammo that not only should it "be absolutely obvious that the current system is not sustainable," but that there is no good reason not to go forward with once-a-week collection, at the very least for those who wish to have that option. For the sake of keeping down the cost of garbage collection, because it would help the county meet its 50% recycling goal (why have trash picked up twice as often as recyclables if the goal is for 50/50 of each?), and because the pilot program was an obvious success, we heartily endorse the change proposed by the City and supported by the Mayor.

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