Trash rates are going up. Will they be fair?

The Truth or Consequences City Commission needs to show all the receipts and let its customers ask questions—and get answers—before they impose solid waste policy and rate changes on their constituents.

How about holding a town hall, city commissioners? Let the engineers who did the rate study and the city employees answer questions.

You should not expect us to take rate increases on trust. Your job is to be transparent enough that we can trust that the ordinances, resolutions, policies and rates are based on facts and evidence and real costs and needs. The rule of law—not city commissioners—are supposed to govern us. And rules and laws are not supposed to be imposed without the people’s consent. That means you give us the receipts and you answer our questions.

You have violated our trust. It’s been less than two years that you stopped transferring $2 million a year and more out of water, wastewater, solid waste and electric funds to pay for overspending elsewhere.

It’s impossible to track where the money went, but yearly audit documents confirm about $250,000 a year for the airport, $250,000 a year for the golf course and $250,000 a year for the swimming pool came out of utility funds—pet projects utility payers had no choice in supporting. Your citizens are still subsidizing golf, airport and pool, just not with utility fees, which is an improvement.

You didn’t take responsibility for the neglect of utilities or the bait-and-switch of utility fees for pet projects. The people are getting wise as their utility rates burgeon. As they see water and sewer in the streets. As they witness electric-grid emergency repairs.

The grid almost went down a few years ago. An emergency loan for around $1.6 million had to be taken out to replace a 60-year-old transformer. You had already spent the electric department’s spare cash ($1 million or so, you never gave us the figures and ongoing costs) on smart metering us, the rate payers, to get even more money out of us. You’re doing the same with water, smart metering us (it will cost $5 million or so, about $1.5 million spent so far) to extract every penny from your captive payers. That was your priority, not fixing broken water pipes leaking 43 percent of the water. Water that leaks after our fees pay to treat and pump the water.

But back to solid waste.

Anonymously, a year and a half ago, our shadow government ordered a study. You didn’t tell us what it cost, but it must have cost a lot, because the study took a year. The same company will be paid another $30,000 out of our fees this year. You approved the expense during a budget hearing nearly on a whim. Solid Waste Department Director Andy Alvarez merely said “I need them,” and you approved the expense without asking what the people will be paying for. For more information on the Parkhill/NewGen year-long study, see:

https://sierracountycitizen.org/solid-waste-rate-study-proves-polycart-customers-overpaid/

Parkhill/NewGen’s scope of work was defined by our shadow government. Its purpose seems, again, to extract money from rate payers the department needs for undefined costs of operations and maintenance and capital projects as well as equipment purchases of $250,000 a year.

The scope of work did not include comparing our current or future rates with other similarly-sized New Mexico communities to see if they are and will be reasonable and competitive. That would have shown that our polycart collection fees are sky high. I did a comparison over three years ago and T or C’s rates were the highest then, and rates have gone up another 5 percent each year since then. https://sierracountysun.org/government/t-or-c/solid-waste-rate-comparison-among-cities-similar-in-size-and-isolation-to-t-or-c/

Such a comparison would show what communities with a local landfill pay versus what we pay to truck trash to a far-off landfill.

T or C commissioners were too short-sighted to plan and apply for a landfill permit before the years-long scheduled shutdown of its old landfill occurred. In the 11-year interim since the “transfer station” opened, costing $1.3 million, which we are still paying for out of trash fees, the city commission has still not applied for a landfill permit. Or even a construction-and-demolition landfill, which would reduce the trucking and tipping fee costs for a lot of tonnage. C&D landfills are not as costly as regular landfills. They have fewer state and federal permitting and operations and closure regulations. The inert material does not produce methane gas or threaten the water table. How about a rate study that compares not having such landfills to getting them?

The city also doesn’t have a green-waste yard, although it used to. One could get free wood-chip mulch. The city could sell it, not give it away, and subtract more tonnage being trucked to the Las Cruces landfill. It could also have a compost heap. It could be limited to people’s voluntarily contributed food waste to keep it pure. The city could sell the enzyme-rich glop by the square yard. More tonnage subtracted.

The Parkhill/NexGen study did not include any analysis of the three R’s that most cities practice to keep trash costs down and the planet sustainable—reduce, reuse, recycle. The people have never had a report on the city’s supposed recycling program since the transfer station opened 11 years ago. The yearly city audits (on the Office of the State Auditor’s website) show only about $25,000 in recycling receipts, which is not impressive and certainly not covering the city’s recycling costs.

The city has been giving away recycling services for 11 years, probably in violation of the anti-donation clause. Now, like most cities, it will start charging for recycling pick-up to cover the staff time and labor and equipment costs. But before it does, like most cities, it should show its homework on how it arrived at the proposed charges.

The solid waste ordinance and the solid waste resolution setting out new fees was removed from last month’s agenda and tabled at the Aug. 14 meeting.

Several people spoke during public comment and the public hearing on the ordinance, such as former mayor Steve Green and his wife Paula Green, as well as T or C Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Gordon Edelheit.

The Greens are on The Bountiful Alliance Recycling Committee. Steve Green deplored that the city was forbidding putting green waste in polycarts. Not only do polycart customers pay $35 a month when the study showed they should be paying about $21 a month, now you want them to take yard waste to the transfer station and pay a cubic-yard fee.

What they said gave the city commissioners pause—enough to table the ordinance and the resolution, but not before they heaped more discretionary powers onto Solid Waste Director Andy Alvarez that will allow him to continue to pick winners and losers and favorites and enemies, which guarantees inequities, including exploitation of polycart payers.

Alvarez gets to decide who is really too elderly or physically disabled to put their polycart at the curb. The prior requirement of getting a doctor’s note is no longer sufficient. Some are fakers and staff has to go into their yards and drag their polycart to the curb, “when we know they can do it,” Alvarez said.

Alvarez’rate-making discretion resulted in the inequitable fees we have now. He hasn’t raised commercial dumpster rates or tipping fees at the scale house for years. He’s been deciding who is a class 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 commercial business and thus their lower or higher rates. Six pick ups a week cost the same as one, small dumpsters cost the same as larger ones. Only polycart rates have gone sky high because a city ordinance requires that they have the city service, making them captive payers.

No wonder the trash volume went up and up, the tonnage trucked to Las Cruces growing and growing, along with department costs. People are probably coming from miles away to dump at the transfer station. If a town hall were held, I’d question where the trash comes from. Is Alvarez taking trash trucks into Sierra County and Elephant Butte? He said he wanted to at a budget session two years ago. “I think I could make money,” he said. He asked for a $250,000 trash truck to do it, which four of the current city commissioners approved.

Audit documents show the trash volume going way up but the cash in solid waste fund going into the red or barely in the green. Although the polycart customers are paying out the nose, subsidizing free recycling and low commercial-dumpster and scale-house fees, their rising rates aren’t keeping up with costs. Four years ago I tried to analyze those costs, but records required of Alvarez are so limited only a crude picture of rising costs emerged:

https://sierracountysun.org/feature/tor-solid-waste-department-operation-costs-and-service-fees-out-of-control/

The city commission has not shown it has any understanding of or desire to understand equity in rate charges or to explain them to its customers. Equality under the law seems a foreign concept to them. Equality arising from neutral fact-finding and good record keeping that provides transparency is not a priority. Getting the ongoing consent of their constituents by making engineers and department heads give fact-based reports is not required.

Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Edelheit said the chamber of commerce does not agree with the proposed rates and asked that the city issue a request for proposals for city trash services. I think it’s a good idea. The Parkhill/NexGen study on which some of the rates are based was too limited and too unrevealing. Competitive bidding would bring a lot of sunshine into the who, what, where, why and when of trash rates.

The city solid waste department should compete in the RFP. T or C and Williamsburg ordinances force their residents to use the city’s polycart services. Release these captive payers. Let’s see how the city does against other players.

One thing Edelheit said made no sense to me—privatizing trash services would result “in no jobs lost.” Huh? It certainly would result in city jobs lost. Maybe to the benefit of the citizens, the supposed purpose of government.