The city must’ve found a gold mine. How else would you explain spending another $50 million plus for a city project?
The latest pipe dream from city staff is a brand spanking new City Yard with an expanded trash sorting facility, transfer station and parking garage. Wisely, staff’s proposal for this $50 million load of rubbish was trashed by the City Council on Tuesday night. $50 million for handling garbage? Isn’t this the cash-strapped city that’s crying about lost tax revenues? Aren’t we facing a multi-million dollar operating deficit and cutting like crazy? And how about those lame excuses why we couldn’t provide more support for our equally cash-strapped schools?
There must be something about building and construction that gets a bureaucrat’s blood pumping and makes them throw reason out with the trash.
There are 32 projects either recently completed, under construction or under consideration. They include seismic retro-fit of downtown parking structures, transit mall improvements, a bus yard expansion, a Virginia Avenue Park expansion, a skate park, the Exposition right-of-way, a civic center specific plan, street and traffic improvements and numerous affordable housing projects.
There must be a half billion dollars or more involved. While these monuments are great for the political and bureaucratic ego, they insure plenty of debt to pay off, and continued high taxes and fees for residents and businesses alike for decades to come.
The new City Yard proposal comes right on the heels of a nearly $10 million giveaway for expanded homeless services at 1751 Cloverfield Blvd. that includes $1.8 million in transit funds even though half of the proposed project will remain on bus yard property at Seventh Street and Colorado Avenue.
Staff’s proposal called for a recycling and transfer facility that would nearly double the daily trash amount the city presently handles to a staggering 600 tons.
The proposal recommends that all trash within the city be processed at the new facility, thus eliminating competition, setting up a monopoly and allowing City Hall to charge whatever it wants.
To insure profitability, the city would have to import up to 200 tons of garbage from other municipalities.
Maximizing recycling is a key component. However, don’t we already lose money on recycling programs — mostly because recyclables are picked clean from neighborhood bins before they ever get into the city’s hands? New York City recently curtailed recycling programs because of their cost.
Any shortfalls in income and debt service on bonds would be charged back to residents and businesses through increased fees.
Substantial increases of truck traffic hauling waste to and from the facility would generate air pollution and serious traffic problems. How “green” is that?
We already import many of the country’s vagrants, so why would we import the region’s garbage, too? The answer has to do with income.
Millions of dollars in grant money for homeless services flow into the city from federal, state and county sources.
Staff apparently felt that the city could also make money processing Los Angeles’ garbage.
What if the city were to operate this new facility like the Civic Auditorium and Santa Monica Pier? Together, these city-owned and operated venues lose about $2 million annually. In fact, the city has a poor track record in generating profits from most of its services.
But, wait. The city already had a proposal to handle the city’s refuse from their next door neighbor, Southern California Disposal. SCD said, based on a reasonably stable city population, the city would come out ahead by $474,000 annually by contracting out its waste management needs.
In light of this, it seems as though city staff would still rather gamble $8 million of our tax money to go into the waste management business, big time.
The promise was that the additional income from a new, larger facility could lead to less expensive trash collection costs for residents. More than likely, any additional income would be squandered by politicians for pet pork such as more homeless services.
The proposal for an expanded city-owned waste management facility should stay in the trash, where it and a lot of other pie-in-the-sky proposals belong.
The City Council did recommend further study of the situation. You can bet your new Cadillac Escalade that, like last night’s Chinese dinner, it will come back in one form or another. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 29, 2003. Read the original PDF.