The City of Columbia held its second “Trash Talk” forum at City Hall on Wednesday night to further discuss switching the city’s trash pick-up to a roll cart service.
The second town-hall style meeting held by the city was incredibly similar to the first — from the informational seminars presented by the city and the oppositional Solid Waste Advocacy Group, or SWAG — to the feverish discussion that saw city council members and city residents continually raising their voices over one another to get their points in.
At the end of this meeting, another informal vote taken by city residents yielded a less-resounding, but still one-sided result — keep trash pick up the same. Although support for SWAG waned slightly, the vote still proved something that many Columbia Residents could already inherently tell you, according to SWAG spokesperson Mary Hussmann.
“That’s kind of the 64,000 dollar question. Why are they even doing this? I was so glad to see the bags here. I think it really works for people. I think that people are showing that in the satisfaction rates of these surveys. We have two years where one year it was 92 percent and one year it was 94 percent. We have a system that works," she said.
Yet, the city seemed hardly deterred by these numbers. Their main focus this evening — according to Public Works Director for the City of Columbia John Glascock — was to remind citizens that while they want a service that works for the public, they also want one that is logistical for the city. According to Glascock, their biggest logistical concern had to do with trying to lower worker’s compensation claims by presenting a safer system.
“We’re talking about the staff and the problems that staff has in collecting the trash. You know, it’s a tough job, it’s very onerous on their body, and so people understand that, they make that connection very easily,” Glascock said.
But to SWAG, this claim of trying to keep workers safe is just a red herring.
“If you can’t find 30 people out of 100,000 people in this city that would want to do that job, then you’re not doing your job of making sure that you advertise these correctly at a decent pay scale," Hussmann said. "You can’t help but be suspicious.”
Glascock said that they had no plans of removing any current city staffers if the automated trash pickup is approved. The next meeting will take place on Tuesday, March 3rd at Russell Boulevard Elementary School.