Trash Tribulations

Citizens to trash panel: Let us choose
Gwinnett Daily Post - Griffin,GA,USA
By Jamie Ward, SNELLVILLE - An interested and concerned citizenry filled Snellville City Hall's community room Thursday night to offer input and suggestions ...

Many different trains of thought emerged from the one-hour session, from putting the issue on a ballot to allow the voters to decide, to restricting only two or three haulers to service a particular zone or zip code

A final theme that seemed to be of concern to a few was the number of trash trucks that go through subdivisions. One woman of the Dogwood Plantations subdivision said 12 trucks sometimes came through on a given day while Bob Lumpkin of Dacula said 11 trucks would travel through his subdivision and it only consisted of one street.

The next meeting to discuss the ongoing trash debacle will take place at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at George Pierce Community Center in Suwanee. The park is located at 55 Buford Highway.

It seems to me that there needs to be some "middle of the road" decision made. Nobody's going to be 100% happy, so meet in the middle.

I'd suggest letting trash companies submit bids - not just bids that are about pricing, but bids that are about service, safety, and the level of upkeep of the companies' vehicles.

Because I can tell you, it's not all about "price." I have Robertson picking up now in my neighborhood, but when I had a choice, I paid a little more for BFI trash pick up, because they seemed more professional and their vehicles weren't billowing out pollution.

So I'd say, narrow the companies down to 3, then let citizens choose which of those 3 they prefer. Some neighborhoods would still have 3 trucks rumbling through, but that's much better than having 11 or 12.

It's bad for our air quality and bad for our streets to have so many heavy vehicles going through a neighborhood.

Our residential streets are not built to support heavy trucks, so to have too many trucks going on our streets, the taxpayer will pay increased road repair expenses in the end.

Again I say it's not about low prices. I will gladly pay more for any service provider who follows all laws, has well-kept vehicles, and does background checks so we can feel safer in our neighborhoods.

Well, that's just my opinion. What's yours? Leave a comment.