• City Council Meeting Special Meeting October 2022

There were three items on the agenda and though there were no department reports, presentations, or recognitions the meeting still lasted longer than two hours. 

It was an all-meat-and-potatoes type of meeting starting with the key item right out of the gate: Entering into a new agreement with CR&R to serve the entire city of Wildomar instead of just the west side of the freeway.

Part of the presentation.

You may be asking, "Why do this?" Or, if you're an east sider, you might be thinking something along the lines of, "But I love Waste Management and I don't want to switch!"

This began outside of the city's reach. It was two private companies making a deal between themselves that would end up with one waste hauler in Wildomar instead of two.

From there, with the original terms of the contract(s) changed, there was the opening to redo the contract(s) and bring them up to city standards, eliminating another vestige from Wildomar's unincorporated county days.

The 115-page contract was negotiated by William Schoen of R3 Consulting Group and Eric Vail who is a member of the law firm that represents Wildomar. 

Much of what's included in the contract deals with compliance with many different state laws that have made trash collection much more expensive for everyone, starting with the individual ratepayers. 

The options were either to approve the contract that had been negotiated, or not approve it which would have meant keeping the existing situation (two separate, and unequal, contracts). The agreement between the two waste haulers was contingent upon the approval of the item. 

The first factor mentioned by Eric Vail was stability

"These are big, complex agreements; they go on for a long time. They go on for a long time to achieve stability. Not only in rates, but in service and in the term. There is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be provided over the term to provide quality waste management services. It's a longer term than the agreement is currently, at least it looks like that. It's not really, because you have an evergreen term right now which lasts forever."

  —Eric Vail

For me, and most people that I spoke with, the twenty-year contract was the big sticking point. So I did a lot of research into this, capped off by speaking with Assemblyman Kelly Seyarto about his knowledge of the subject. 

He has been in Sacramento for a couple of sessions now, seeing one bill after another that adds more and more unfunded mandates to the populace as Sacramento continues to tilt towards the windmills of the impossible: a pristine world.

He was also part of Murrieta's city council that came to a twenty-two-year agreement with their waste haulers a few years back. 

I encourage you to listen to the first part of the video below if you'd like the details as they were shared with the council. Jumping to the end of the argument of a twenty-year contract, they are part of our brave new world in California and we are by no means trailblazers for others.

To put a twenty-year contract into perspective, the previous ten-year evergreen contract had no end to it. 

The city is now fourteen years old, to get out of the contract and put the services out to bid would have taken ten more years... meaning that the ten-year contract would have minimally been a twenty-four-year contract had we opted to pull that trigger and look for a new service provider. 

Baseball analogy time 

A contract between a city and a waste hauler isn't like a contract between the California Angels of Anaheim signing an over-the-hill star (Albert Pujols) to ten-year contract.

Quality was the guiding light for the negotiators

Mr. Vail added, "How do we insure quality in your solid waste handling services?" 

Here are some checks and balances that were not part of the previous agreement.

No immediate rate increase (those occur in July, and that will not change).

Rate stabilization

Previously, the waste haulers would get a yearly CPI (Consumer Price Index) increase in July. There was no cap. In the new agreement, there is a range between 2% and 8%... that's even if the inflation rate was 15%-25%. To add to that protection of wild spikes, it takes three-year averages of the CPI so that there aren't wild swings.

My estimation is that it'll basically be the same rate one way or the other after a given ten-year period, just without a roller coaster effect if the economy gets moody.

These are all terrific things that our negotiating team got included in the contract. Skip to the 15-minute mark of the video to hear about these provisions and how valuable they are to us. 

I'm not going to go over each and every point, the video can speak for itself, and much better than I'd be able to recap. I can say that those five items in the graphic above are immeasurable improvements from what we had. 

From 2 to 3 bulky item pick-ups a year

Each scheduled pick-up can have up to four items, that's a total of twelve bulky items per year. The big bonus here is that if you choose, you can have all twelve bulky items picked up on one scheduled visit. I hope we don't keep seeing old furniture on the sidewalks.

This has been on the sidewalk near my house since before the rains a couple of weeks ago. Hey homeowner, your generous offer of a free chair hasn't captured anyone's fancy... time to call it in, please.

If you live in Wildomar, you are a customer of CR&R, so just be a good neighbor and schedule a pick-up. 

These are big plusses.

That was the end of Eric Vail's presentation. It was followed up by CR&R's Alex Braicovich. He fielded questions, including many that I'd gotten from residents.

Most of the new customers will remain with the same day of service they've always had. There are about 1500 customers that were formerly with Waste Management that will be transitioned to a new day... Thursday is what was mentioned during the meeting.

Please take a look at the video to see how the meeting went, then go to Facebook and post comments if you still feel the urge.

The second major item on the agenda was street sweeping 

In short, those that are already getting street sweeping will continue to do so. The council instructed staff to research the cost to have street sweeping throughout the city.

Street sweeping goes a long way to keeping us in compliance with various clean runoff water requirements and helps keep the storm drains clean too.

Though I want street sweeping, and have heard many complaints since my neighborhood doesn't have street sweeping, I know that nice things cost money, and I'm curious as to the cost. 

I'm hoping that it won't be unaffordable for the residents, making it DOA in my view... I anticipate that staff will come back with that answer sometime next year and then the council will vote on it.

Imagine the Herculean task that a self-stylized elected employee would be up against trying to personally reach out to all the 2000 homes, which includes about 4500 voters, to ask them how to vote on it. An elected official would have to have the powers of Santa Claus to be able to pull off such a feat. 

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Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

– Abe Lincoln

Wildomar Rap reminds you that cropping your enemies out of other people's photos is also a good solution and you can then skip the pretense of being friends. 

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