CITIZENS URGE CITY TRASH BIDS

Despite residents' urging, the Cape Girardeau City Council Monday took no action to seek bids from private trash haulers on the city's residential trash service.

In other business, Larry Godfrey of 1732 Rampart presented a petition to the council with the signatures of 1,786 voters who favor switching from at-large to "zone" council elections.

Godfrey asked that the council give first reading to a measure setting the issue on the ballot for the November election.

But City Attorney Warren Wells said the signatures have to be checked by the county clerk before that can be done. About 1,650 signatures of registered voters are needed for the question to be placed on the ballot.

During the council's study session Monday, a majority of council members said they wouldn't favor asking the city's Solid Waste Task Force to study whether to bid residential trash service.

And although the item was included for discussion during Monday's regular meeting, the council took no further action.

Miki Gudermuth of 1314 Brookshire is one of several residents who in the past few months has urged the council to bid residential trash service. On Monday Gudermuth quoted campaign statements of council members when they were running for city council.

She accused council member Mary Wulfers of "reneging" on her support of private trash hauling during the election campaign of 1990, while she praised Mayor Gene Rhodes and Councilman Doug Richards for "standing by their campaign promises" to support bidding the service.

She also quoted City Manager J. Ronald Fischer as saying he's tried to run city government like a "business" with residents as its "customers."

"If we are customers we're really being treated shabbily," Gudermuth said. "There are campaign promises that have not been kept. If you want to be voted in, as customers I think we have a right to be heard and listened to."

John Stephenson, owner of SEMO Waste Management in Cape Girardeau, joined Gudermuth in asking the council to open residential trash collection to competition from private haulers.

He said Carbondale, Ill., charges $6.75 per month for one trash collection each week, but also allows residents to contract with private haulers.

"The city manager there said it's working fine," Stephenson said. "They have very few complaints."

Charles Woodford, 348 Country Club Drive, said that although he doesn't want the city to bid trash service he favors a return to twice-a-week trash collection.

"I don't need twice a week garbage pickup but I think a lot of people do," he said.

Woodford asked the council to discontinue curbside recycling in lieu of a single collection center where residents could drop off recyclables.

Although the council took no action to bid trash service, at the study session they did debate whether to let the citizens Solid Waste Task Force further study the matter.

Wulfers joined Councilmen David Limbaugh, Al Spradling III and Melvin Kasten in resisting the requests of Rhodes, Richards and Councilman Melvin Gateley to add the issue to the task force's charge.

She said the task force already has a sufficiently wide scope of responsibilities through its charge to study volume-based billing methods and the city's role in a regional solid waste district.

But Gateley, the council's liaison with the task force, said he's talked with six of the nine members of the committee who are receptive to considering the matter.

Rhodes said: "I feel they should have the opportunity of looking into the possibility of taking bids and make a recommendation to us on bidding trash service."

But Wulfers said she didn't think the city should relinquish control over solid waste with so many unresolved issues concerning the formation of regional districts and new state and federal trash mandates.

"All this stuff being mandated regarding solid waste districts are all issues we have to deal with whether we privatize or not," she said. "The law is still unfolding, and the committee already has a huge task.

"To compound it by asking them to consider whether they need to bid it out is just too much," Wulfers said. "They have a very big and important job already."

But Richards said that because solid waste issues are in a state of flux, and costs continue to rise, the city should be all the more willing to consider alternatives such as private haulers.

Limbaugh said that regardless of whether the task force recommended bidding trash service, the ultimate decision would remain with the council. He said he's convinced bidding the service is a bad idea.

Limbaugh said that although the council faces an "image problem" in the community, it shouldn't be grounds for rehashing an issue that's been thoroughly dealt with in the past.

"I do think we've studied this a lot," he said. "We get into this issue of really undermining the morale of the employees in the solid waste division.

"They don't know if they're going to have their jobs or not because every year they get hammered with this. We as a council need to provide some continuity for a long-term way of dealing with this issue. There's widespread misinformation out there right now that gives rise to this discontent."