Trash tradition: Is Minneapolis getting the best price?

Minneapolis' trash-hauling tradition may be working, but the thought that it could work better for city residents has put it back on the City Council agenda -- and maybe in court.

The City Council is scheduled to vote Friday on a plan to seek competitive proposals from outside haulers of its residential trash for the first time since backyard trash burning was banned in 1971. It's likely to approve that step.

Council Member Scott Benson portrayed the issue as Good Government 101, using competition to force haulers to offer their best price and service level. "This is the best way to test the market," he said.

Since 1972, the city has divided the job of trash collecting between city crews and a consortium of 14 private haulers.

The council already has voted once to seek outside proposals.

That was in early 2006 when newly sworn freshman council members helped form a new majority favoring outside proposals.

But then the city's existing private haulers blocked that step by suing. A judge ruled last year that the haulers were correct in insisting that the city must go through a planning process specified by state law before it could seek proposals.

Now the city has done so, sitting down with current and other interested haulers, and key solid waste officials have recommended getting those competitive proposals.

Minneapolis Refuse Inc. (MRI), the consortium of 14 haulers, isn't ready to say whether it will contest such a move. But its lawsuit remains alive.

Greg Burt, MRI chairman, said the upcoming vote has high stakes for MRI's haulers. "It's a big day for us because each individual hauler, a lot of them 100 percent of their business is in MRI," he said.

'If it ain't broke...'

Burt is typical of the dozen small haulers who dominate MRI's ranks, most of them mom-and-pop businesses running one or two trucks and operating only in Minneapolis. Two major national haulers also belong to MRI.

MRI backers make an if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it argument. They point with pride at the city's own resident surveys in which trash collection is the highest-ranked city service. They say they stepped in to form a partnership with the city when the burning ban swelled the amount of trash to be collected.

That resonates with Council President Barb Johnson. "I have the same garbage hauler my parents had," she said during a recent council committee debate. "To be spending all this time and rigmarole over something people are highly satisfied with boggles my mind."

Some question whether the current arrangement amounts to a perpetual contract for MRI.

The city has negotiated a series of five-year contracts since 1971 with MRI instead of seeking outside proposals. Unlike some government services, garbage contracts don't need to be awarded to the low bidder. The council beat back efforts by a minority of council members to seek outside proposals as recently as 2001. But when that contract was due to expire last year, the council's freshman class provided five of the 10 votes to seek proposals.

Is city getting the best price?

Solid Waste Director Susan Young said seeking proposals doesn't necessarily commit the city to taking the cheapest one or rejecting its current haulers.

The current method of splitting city trash hauling between private and public crews provides some implied checks on the costs and service of either, its advocates say.

But Young said the current system doesn't encourage MRI haulers to offer the city their best price. The staff proposal would split the private half of the city into four zones, with haulers able to make proposals on any or all of them. Some favor that as a means for small or minority-owned hauling firms to garner business; others worry that industry giants Waste Management and BFI would low-bid the others and then cut service.

MRI representatives have argued that the city didn't negotiate in good faith with them. But city staff have said that the law doesn't require that agreement be reached with haulers, freeing them to offer their alternative.

Meanwhile, some outside haulers want a chance to offer their services. Tom Johnson, a lobbyist for Aspen Waste Systems, said the firm was told years ago that it could haul Minneapolis trash only if it bought into MRI. But Johnson argued that a hauler shouldn't have to buy into a private entity to serve the public.

Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438