Sanitation In Hallandale Beach

Last week, we held a special budget workshop. One of the main topics of discussion during the workshop was our Sanitation Division. Our city continues to provide this service in-house successfully while keeping our rates competitive. While that is great news we have not looked at any rate increase for over 8 years while operational costs and tipping fees, and the rate we are charged for disposal, have increased.

 Last year, we began the goal of making the sanitation fund sustainable.  For years, the large corporations have been trying to convince our elected officials to contract the service out. This means selling the franchise so the private company can make money.  I like to say that while we do not want to lose money, we are not for profit, we are for people. Cities once locked into these contracts end up being locked in to increases with little or no control.

Our sanitation division is set up by a financial model called an enterprise fund. The best way to describe it is just like a separate business. Employees’ equipment and the fees we pay to deliver the trash for processing are all paid for through the fees we charge. While all operational costs have gone up the fee has remained flat. The fund pays the city a franchise fee that goes to our general fund. Last year, we stopped this practice which cut the funds. While this helped, we still remained focused on ways to maintain and improve service delivery without large increases.

The first steps were to re-evaluate all our operations. The division is actually regulated through an ordinance that spells out what our services are to be and the fees we are to charge for each service provided. Staff found that we were not following the ordinance as was intended.

The first major glaring discrepancy is our recycling. 30 years ago, our city was 1 of 5 first cities in Broward to establish commingled recycling. We went to automated trucks with large green bins.  For years, we delivered our waste to the Reuters Plant in Pembroke Pines where the trash was sorted then processed. Originally, this system was to include converting the composited waste into pellets. That never occurred and trash was just composted and shipped out. The rest of the cities were sending their waste to either the landfill or the Waste to an energy plant.

The system located in the far west was in operation for years. Then residential homes were springing up. Soon there were complaints of odors from the composting. The recycling market was also failing. The plant stopped its recycling and the five cities sued.  4 of the cities settled by entering into a 20-year contract. We held out and ended up in a settlement which included a favored nation’s disposal rate. At that time, I used to joke that we were the LeBron James of Broward County.

We then had to set up recycling. We established the service with blue bins and added a two-dollar recycling fee. This had worked for some time but the market for recycling dried up and the new plant would not accept any recyclables that were commingled. This means garbage mixed with accepted glass, plastic, and paper. These loads would simply get dumped with the regular garbage.

This has been Broward County’s trashy secret. Many cities are not truly recycling.  All the trash is going to the same place.  Recycling has basically become a feel-good thing. I am not saying I do not believe recycling is not important, I have done it for years.  After finding all the effort was a waste, I stopped.

At our meeting, we collectively agreed to stop the program. Having extra vehicles, separate bins and double routes only to have the trash end up in the same place is futile. It is also disingenuous to our citizens.

Broward cities have been negotiating a sanitation plan for over four years.   They just released their plan with the goal of recycling but most of the plan will take many years to implement.   They stopped short of focusing on incineration as a 1^st tier solution. The stigma around incineration plants of years past has put a chilling effect on this trash solution. The new modern plants are safer, and many countries utilize them along with other methods.  For now, we will be collecting all the blue bins and going back to green bins only. The operational cuts make sense and will help the bottom line.

I will continue to review the other programs and rate changes in next week’s article.

As always, I am available anytime for your questions, concerns, and ideas to make our city a better place at phone/text 954-632-5700 or you can email me at jcooper@cohb.org. Please visit me on my Facebook page at Mayor Joy Cooper. Like, follow, and share.