“Penny wise and Pound foolish”
Mariemont is a walkable community where residents enjoy many conveniences that other communities do not. One of these is the pickup of recyclables and garbage from the rear of the homes. In discussing this convenience with two realtors that focus their sales in Mariemont, both indicated that this distinguishing service was a significant selling point for real-estate in the Village and helped to sell our homes at the highest prices in the County or about $225-$250 per square foot.
Now the Village officials are considering moving recycling pickup to the curb for a savings of $17,000 per year according to the Easter Hills Journal article on January 29th. With approximately 1300 household in Mariemont, this figure equates to $13.07 per year per household. With convenience and ambience and real-estate values in mind, this is the height of “penny wise and pound foolish.” Already we are paying a $75 per year waste collection fee plus a $2 dollars sticker fee for each waste container. According to the budgetary figures for the Village of Mariemont in 2013, these fees and assessments provided approximately $204,000 to subsidize waste collection. The Village kicked in about $80,000 to fulfill the waste collection contracts.
When municipal budgets are under stress, elected officials tend to cut services and this appears to be the case in this instance. Unfortunately, in many, if not most, communities curbside recycling is only the prelude to curb waste collection.
With regard to recycling, do we really want our curbs cluttered for over 24 hours per week with a cost savings of 3.6 cents per day per household? And how about the inconvenience and how you must make arrangements when you are away for whatever reason? This issue makes Mariemont special and should be openly discussed. What an issue to lay on a Council comprised of 50% new members?
While I applaud any consideration being given to minimizing expenses, it’s disappointing to read that Council (at the Mayor’s direction) is willing to sacrifice a service that distinguishes Mariemont from other local communities. Though it may seem like a trivial loss, behind the house trash and recycling collection is an amenity that adds to our community’s aesthetic and property value. Had our community leaders only been willing to consider the JEDZ opportunity recently presented by Columbia Township, perhaps now they wouldn’t be so keen to sell off this distinctive feature of our community.
I am still left to wonder though how sanitary or what type of attraction it is to have two very overflowing recycling boxes each week that rats and raccoons come into and scour for the smallest taste of what did not get perfectly rinsed. We have litter that gets blown all through our back yard from recycling containers. I would like to know if there are any other options for larger, enclosed containers that might be able to be collected from the rear. Keep in mind though, many of the homes along the Bluff and along other streets do indeed have front facing garages in which the trash sits out front already, just not at the curb. I would love the perfect compromise of a solution.
I am glad to be getting a larger, covered container for recycling, but likewise will miss the pickup at the back of my house. If I go for the 65-gal unit, it is more than 3 times the size of the current bins.
This is not an irreversible decision… it seems to me that we can revisit this when the contract is renewed next time.
If a neighbor is out of town, it is a great opportunity to take their cans in/out for them… that’s also what makes our village a great place to live!
I know this issue is a polarizing issue among many Mariemont residents. You can be assured that this issue alone will take up quite a bit of time at the annual Town Hall meeting later this month – as well it should if you ask me.
$17,000 in savings, while nice on the surface, seems more like a “soft blow” to the eventual impending step of curbside garbage recycling. Come time for the renewal of our contract with Rumpke, perhaps then it will be the end of rear yard collection altogether. Mayor Policastro said at the February 10th Village council meeting that no other garbage collection company will even attempt to place a bid on collection services in our Village because of the rear yard collection stipulation – meaning, that if Rumpke is the only game in town for such a service, then we end up paying for this decision to move recycling collection to curb-side one way or another.
For Rumpke to offer a “free” recycling collection cart to over 1400 or so households and to save $17,000 in the process, means that this deal means a lot more to Rumpke than it does to us. At 1400 or so households and to only save $17,000, could there not have been a small increase along the way to help keep some of the unique services that Mariemont has to offer the same?? Correct my math if I am incorrect, but $17,000 in savings for those 1400+ households equates to roughly a $12 increase per household. And if $17,000 is really that big of an issue, I think I could scrape up $12 a year to keep my recycle collection at rear yard. And, to be a good steward and to assist in cost-savings for all parties involved, I would be open to discussing buying one of the recycling carts – be it a 35 or 65 gallon container – to help offset the cost of Rumpke simply “giving” one of the carts to me for “free.” I understand that costs increase over time for good and services. I have spoken with my Rumpke collectors many times. They wish that we had wheeled carts for everything – from recycling, to trash, to lawn clippings. For instance, they hate the plastic bags for lawn debris as much as we as residents hate having to buy and fill the lawn bags. To have to tear open each and every bag before they dump the clippings into their truck is a huge pain for them and huge time/labor waster.
The bottom line is that it is a shame that this decision was voted on and implemented by Council without any real input or comments from the Village residents. To me, it is evident that there could have been more discussions or more means of which to accommodate the cost savings that Council so desired to achieve. $17,000 savings here, $10,000 savings there, etc, etc. Yes, it does start to add up. But eliminating rear yard pick-up, cutting back on police & fire staffing, eliminating elected officials, passing up an opportunity for a joint economic development zone that would have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for our Village, etc, etc, THAT ALL TOO starts to add up as well.