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At the Thursday, August 20, Peachtree City Council meeting it became clear very early in the meeting that a proposal to move to a single city-wide trash hauler, Amwaste, was dead on arrival.
The initial proposal, started at the January Council retreat was to replace the three currently approved waste haulers, Pollard, GFL Environmental, and Republic Services, with a single provider and possibly add additional services, specifically yard waste pickup.
Given my interest in failure analysis- why planes and trains crash, electronics fail, and human systems go awry, I listened intently and reflected on what had gone wrong given the vast majority of residents would save money with Amwaste.
Using Keep Peachtree City Beautiful (KPTCB) numbers from their budget presentation on August 20, Pollard services 4,044 homes, GFL has 2,638, and Republic has 5,318, all approximate numbers. Using Amwaste’s Request for Proposal (RFP) quarterly cost of $63.45 and Pollard, GFL, and Republic’s current quarterly costs of $75, $72, and $87.60, respectively, the annualized savings for Peachtree City residents by my calculations would be $790,000, roughly equivalent to last year’s millage rollback.
Depending on provider, individual households would see annualized savings of $46 to $97. Comments in The Citizen on my last article called this chump change, and I’m still waiting for the checks from those that think it is.
Nearly everyone saves money so it should have been a done deal, right? Not so quick…
I attempted to obtain the RFP slides shown at a past Council meeting to no avail so I’m relying on memory, however, the proposal had three basic options: the first was pickup of trash and recycles every week; the second included yard waste every other week, and the third included bulk pickups every other week. Naturally, costs went up as services increased.
I gravitated to option one because it was simply replacing current service with an additional recycle pickup, which I don’t need- but nearly everyone would save money. In retrospect, option one should have been a replacement of current service to get a true apples-to-apples cost comparison.
I estimate with a 25% reduction of trucks due to picking up recycles every other week, Amwaste’s quarterly cost would be about $50, saving residents a collective $1.4-million and individual households, $100 to $150 per year.
Others looking at the RFP numbers saw the higher prices associated with yard waste and bulk items and were concerned we’d all get stuck with that- a very legitimate concern!
A comprehensive RFP is a good tool to evaluate provider capability, services, and costs but is a terrible document to show without sufficient framing or commentary. Number don’t speak on their own.
As a glass half full person, I could find something to like, but glass half empty residents would find something to dislike, and all of us were correct.
When Council took their final vote, I didn’t even know what they were voting on- option one, two, or three, or “we wish we’d never brought this up, may we please just move on.”
During Council Polacek’s commentary about his “no” vote, it emerged that the primary impetus for the RFP was simply to assess systematic pickup of yard waste. Overhauling the entire city-wide waste collection system just to test yard waste options is letting the caboose drive the train.
City staff spent eight months surveying providers and creating and presenting an RFP that ended up being a complete waste of time because Council didn’t begin with the end in mind.
As an aside about yard waste pickup, I don’t deny that it is something that would be helpful for some homeowners, but my yard waste is my problem to solve- and pay for.
I believe in public support for public amenities like parks and the library but not private property, like my home.
Like almost every home in Peachtree City, I have grass clippings and fallen pinecones, twigs, and branches. The clippings stay on the lawn, and I have intentionally left a wild space in my back yard where I drop everything else, or I haul to the Rockaway facility with my truck.
Several Citizen commenters indicated including yard waste with trash pickup as a service for all is a solution in search of a problem, and I agree.
Council and City staff also failed to address edge cases, which ultimately stopped the proposal.
Cresswind residents came out in full force to the Council meeting.
Apparently, they have an HOA-wide waste collection contract for less than the Amwaste proposal, and they pay separately for landscaping and with yard waste being hauled away while the work is done- a very convenient service indeed!
While the vast majority of residents would save money with a single provider, not one of them spoke publicly as they likely they didn’t know a single provider was being considered.
Potential loss is a huge driver of action; potential gain, not so much.
If I lived in Cresswind, you can bet I would have spoken out against.
The other edge case was those that don’t have any provider, specifically seniors who generate a limited amount of trash and share service with others. I suspect they are a significant portion of the approximate 1,400 households eligible for curb service that don’t have it.
Quite simply, a senior discount would be an excellent solution to this.
I do want to point out, though, that sharing service is against all three current providers’ contracts. One small bag of trash per week over hundreds of households adds up to a large amount and real cost.
Sharing trash service may feel harmless, but like sharing a subscription login such as Netflix, it shifts costs onto paying customers.
The failure to select Amwaste as a single provider was partly their fault, too.
As part of public comment, a resident indicated that she attempted to call and email the Fayette County Waste Transfer Station, which Amwaste has managed since 2023, and looked at the company reviews on the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website and Indeed, a website where employees rate their employer.
The commenter received no responses to her call and email, a very bad public relations move.
I tested myself, too. I sent an email on Sunday, August 23, in the evening and received a rather unsatisfactory response at 1:00 p.m. on Monday- not slow but not fast either. My calls were not answered or returned.
Amwaste’s communications are not good.
Additionally, it seems Amwaste does not reply to BBB inquiries, but this may not be the problem it seems.
Depending on location, BBB lists between five and 42 complaints total; however, Amwaste operates in Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia. Relative to their size, a few complaints against any location is miniscule, and it is unclear if complaints ever expire.
On the other hand, Republic Services is an Accredited Business and A+ rated by BBB because they pay dues to the BBB and did the work to be accredited.
As an accredited entity, a vendor isn’t required to guarantee customer satisfaction; they simply must respond to filed complaints. The BBB rarely adjudicates the substance of a dispute, an intention structural design that prioritizes mediation over enforcement.
Looking at Indeed, where employees rate their employer, Amwaste is listed three times with 14 reviews and a score of 2.5, 11 reviews and a score of 1.9, and no reviews or score.
Republic has 4,600 reviews and a score of 3.0 while GFL has 1,300 reviews and a score of 2.5. I could not find Pollard on Indeed.
Simple statistical inference would suggest that 25 reviews versus thousands are not enough to make a good comparison, and given that large publicly traded corporations typically undertake reputation polishing initiatives, including encouraging employees to post positive reviews- one of the things that drives a higher number of reviews- a comparison on Indeed has little value.
I also want to address the anti-monopoly public comments.
One commentor suggest the City could establish one fast food restaurant, one package delivery company, or one grocery store as a monopoly in the city, and if he received terrible service, he’d have no recourse- the same being true of a single trash hauler.
This sounds good on the surface, but Peachtree City completely lacks statutory authority except in a few specialized cases to make any business a single city-wide provider.
One of the areas where the City has statutory authority is solid waste, which is treated as a utility for many reasons, and because it involves public health. We only have one water system, one sanitary sewer system, and one stormwater system- all utilities and all affect public health.
For those that want freedom of choice, here is what you get today: a choice among three providers- not ten or five- just three.
By the franchise agreement, if your provider misses a pickup, there is no requirement to try again within any time period, except your next regularly scheduled service, and the only recourse Peachtree City has is complete revocation of the franchise agreement, a draconian measure never used unless provider problems are significant.
Currently, all services are largely prepaid. I pay Republic two weeks into their quarterly service period. If I cancel service for any reason, including missed pickups, I’m not entitled to a refund- that’s in the contract. If I want to take them to small claims court, not likely for $87.60, I can’t because their contract has a mandatory arbitration clause.
All the providers can raise prices at any time, and you have about two weeks of notice to call the other providers to make a change. Again, no prorated refunds.
In short, they don’t have to provide good service, and I essentially have zero recourse except to cut my losses and contract with the two remaining providers. But, hey, I have a choice.
On the other hand, the City RFP indicated that a single provider must collect missed pickups within 24 hours, could be fined for missing pickups, and must maintain video recordings of daily pickup routes to review if a customer complains. There’s not much better evidence than video.
Council had also discussed adding customer refunds for missed pickups as a requirement of an exclusive agreement.
As part of their RFP response, Amwaste indicated they would not increase prices for three years- except if diesel fuel went above a predetermined level, and limit future increases to CPI-U, currently about 3% per year.
Additionally, for the anti-monopoly crowd, nationally, hundreds, if not thousands, of municipalities and Homeowners Associations have exclusive provider agreements, including our very own Cresswind HOA- did any of you stop and scold them for being monopolists?
Peachtree City did not consider anything that hasn’t been done elsewhere for decades.
A public commenter spoke about Amwaste service in Newnan and did not say they did a bad job. He disliked that the homeowner, not the residents, are ultimately responsible for the bill, but this is how Newnan structured the agreement, not Amwaste.
Moving back to the theme of this editorial, namely, what sunk one city-wide waste hauler that would have saved most residents real money, you may ask, Schultzie, what would you have done differently?
Hindsight being 20/20, I can compare the single waste-hauler to other initiatives.
In late 2021, due to a large number of path safety complaints, the City Council stood up a Multi-Use Path System Advisory Group (MUPSAG), which was the precursor to the current Transportation Advisory Group (TAG), of which I’m a member and chair.
MUPSAG included roughly eight residents from across the city, met for a limited duration, and had the responsibility to gather resident input on the path system, synthesize that input, and make recommendations while TAG was created by ordinance and is ongoing in nature.
The same way MUPSAG and, especially, TAG has collected input has been to publish an agenda with topics, and residents can speak frankly and directly. Being that both groups are comprised of volunteers, the stakes and the stress at any meeting is much less than a formal City Council meeting.
If City government is serious about yard waste collection or using one city-wide trash hauler, I’d suggest an advisory group similar to the periodic SPLOST advisory groups.
A group with volunteers from Cresswind and other HOAs, seniors, KPTCB staff, and residents who’ve worked in solid waste would be a good start.
The first order of business would be a plan to meet over several months and create a public communications and outreach plan, including periodic reports to Council and City staff.
Somewhere in the mix we’d survey residents specifically about the services they want and the frequency they want them.
Had a proposal for one city-wide waste hauler been managed better, residents could have been looking at saving collectively $790,000 to $1.4-million with individual households saving $50 to $150 per year.
The proposal didn’t fail because it was a bad idea; it failed because it was introduced without a clear purpose, without stakeholder alignment, and without a communication plan designed to address resident concerns.
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