Excellent reporting on a hot button local issue. My lack of attendance at City Council meetings has left me quite grateful for your objective dissemination of factual information.
While I can see that the council has spent a significant amount of time on researching this topic, I wonder why the ad hoc committee had no members of the business community on it when a contract that directly affects business’s bottom line was at stake.
Excellent reporting. A few questions: 1. when does the new contract go into effect? 2. Will there be new pickup schedules to adapt to?
As I read the details it seems that:
1. The city will receive a 10% fee based on the gross revenues. We are essentially paying that fee with a 15.8% increase in our monthly service fee.
2. We also will sustain a built in COLA of 5% annually. If I’m not mistaken this is in excess of the current inflation rate.
In conclusion, the new service provider succeeded in passing the “normal” Franchise Fee on to their new customers (which presumably we were already paying for less cost to the former provider) and they built in an automatic 5% annual fee increase. Sweet deal for them! I don’t know what our former service provider was demanding but I’m thinking the City Council got snookered. If more information was provided by the City perhaps I’d feel differently. Until then, Shame on you City Council.
Vice Mayor McLewis is discovering Sebastopol can be mean-spirited place for those who are not part of the in crowd.
Excellent reporting on a hot button local issue. My lack of attendance at City Council meetings has left me quite grateful for your objective dissemination of factual information.
While I can see that the council has spent a significant amount of time on researching this topic, I wonder why the ad hoc committee had no members of the business community on it when a contract that directly affects business’s bottom line was at stake.
Good article. I believe Council and city staff did a good job and came up with the correct decision.
Thank you for your reporting on city council meetings!
Excellent reporting. A few questions: 1. when does the new contract go into effect? 2. Will there be new pickup schedules to adapt to?
As I read the details it seems that:
1. The city will receive a 10% fee based on the gross revenues. We are essentially paying that fee with a 15.8% increase in our monthly service fee.
2. We also will sustain a built in COLA of 5% annually. If I’m not mistaken this is in excess of the current inflation rate.
In conclusion, the new service provider succeeded in passing the “normal” Franchise Fee on to their new customers (which presumably we were already paying for less cost to the former provider) and they built in an automatic 5% annual fee increase. Sweet deal for them! I don’t know what our former service provider was demanding but I’m thinking the City Council got snookered. If more information was provided by the City perhaps I’d feel differently. Until then, Shame on you City Council.