Council discusses proposed city cleanup plans

The Red Oak City Council is finalizing plans for a citywide clean-up day next month.
At the regular Red Oak City Council meeting May 19, city administrator Lisa Kotter updated the council on the progress made since the council adopted new code charging $4 per month on water bills to fund the proposed clean-up. The clean-up days are set for June 20 and 21.
“We intended to do a drop-off. We believe that we need to make sure that we have a place that allows for easy traffic in and out and has storage areas. I met with representatives from the Montgomery County Fair Board, and they are willing to allow us to use the gravel parking lot that’s north of the White Fair building. Our intent would be to have a map to try to encourage people to come in from Eighth Street, assuming we have permission from the school, then come across to Fourth Street, then go north on to Alix, and then we’re going to bring people in on the park on our city property. There’s gravel driveways there. We can bring them in by the campgrounds there, on the backside,” explained Kotter. “They can exit on the street that goes by the fire station, and whoever the hauler is can then come out the driveway that’s just to the west of the White Fair building.”
Identification will be required and the event will only be available to Red Oak residents. Kotter said she sent out requests for proposals to all five haulers that do business in the community, asking them to submit an RFP for what their ideas were and indicating the dates in June are booked.
“What we’re looking for from the haulers is what capacity do you have? How many roll-offs do you have? How many trucks do you have? What ability do you have to help us man it? We’ll obviously have all hands on deck from the city, but we have to be able to make sure that there is no chance that the event only goes for, say, six hours and then we’re done. We want to have it be two full days so that people who can come during the week will come on Friday, and then those who cannot can come on Saturday. Once the council gets everything approved at the June 2 meeting, I think our best effort is to put door hangers at every house that looks like they need to be taking their stuff there,” advised Kotter. “We can have some sort of a nuisance notice on one side, with a flyer for the cleanup on the other. And it would basically say that you’re on our nuisance abatement list. Here’s what you have in the backyard. You’re paying for this on your utility bill and this is your first opportunity to dispose of these things for free.”
The event will also need volunteers. Kotter said she was going to reach out to Rotary and to the Kiwanis. John Gross, who opposed plans for municipal garbage, had offered to gather volunteers with trucks and trailers. The school or other organizations may also be able to pick up and haul items to the event for a free-will donation.  Chris Dovel volunteered a truck that would fit up to 30 appliances, and said he would be able to dispose of them for $5 per appliance. Kotter said she did not subscribe to asking business people to clean up the community for free just because they’re in the business, nor would she expect that of the haulers, and the city was collecting money to cover the fees.
Lynette Bruce with Batten Sanitation addressed the council and asked why RFPs were being required.
“In the very beginning, when all this came about, we offered to help with this, as well as possibly help financially. One of the RFP questions is to list other clean-up events you’ve done. Batten Sanitation has dedicated 42 years to the service of Red Oak and only Red Oak. In that time, there’s been one citywide cleanup,” commented Bruce. “So how would I have three events with references to list on an RFP? With that being said, we have regular routes and customers that we have to take care of on those days. What are we supposed to do about that? I can’t just leave them hanging. It was never discussed with us. That’s what I don’t understand. We were hoping we’d be able to have discussion on this and have some influence.”
Bruce added Batten Sanitation did not have the resources or capability to do the whole town in two days.
“Why can’t we divide it up into sections and do certain parts on certain days? This RFP seems like just a way to cut us out again,” Bruce said. “Even if we combine together, we cannot.”
Kevin Carlisle with Town and Country Sanitation echoed Bruce’s concerns about the scope.
“I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, this sanitation. I’m involved in at least three cleanups a year. This is absurd. It should be done in sections. We can’t handle it. If this would have come to us, we could have discussed this. It can be done in sections. It might be all summer long, every other weekend, or whatever it might be. But it can be done during the week or Saturday morning. Ours typically start from 8 to 11 a.m.,” said Carlisle. “We allow two tires per residence, charge $5 a piece. I’m there with my skid loader and a grapple bucket, literally breaking up the larger items like the desks and anything that can be smashed. We literally load it and stack it into the roll-off. Just so everybody’s clear, we’re not opposed to the cleanup at all. We’ve been on-board since day one. We’ve been beating this horse for seven months. But you just took the two of us out of the picture.”
Kotter asked that the haulers issue in their proposal what they thought the city should do, and what they have for capacity. City councilperson Brian Bills agreed.
“That’s why we put out RFPs. Like when we built our subdivision up north town, we put the RFP out there so we can get information back. That way, we know that people that we’re hiring to do the job are capable of doing the job. And that’s one reason the RFP goes out. We want to get all the cost figures involved. This is not anything new. I mean, normal procedure when we purchase anything above a certain value or we do anything that’s out of the ordinary, we always put RFPs out,” stated Bills.
Councilperson Sharon Bradley said that the process being used was not intended to affect either business.
“We have gone through this for six months, and everybody has backed you in this community. Don’t think that we haven’t backed you too. We have worked with you the whole time. If we want to do a citywide cleanup with a bigger contractor that you can’t do, it’s not going to affect your regular schedule. We’re not taking away from that,” Bradley explained.
Councilperson Tim Fridolph said the city was focusing on a large-scale event to start with because of the needs.
“We’re trying to do is what’s best for the community. We’re talking about a scale of a cleanup. As Lynette said, you’ve participated in a clean-up one time. How long ago was that? We need to do something big initially to wipe the slate clean. We can’t drag this out for six to eight weeks to get it cleaned up. We don’t have that kind of time. The future ones probably don’t need to be as big. None of this has ever meant to cut you guys out,” Fridolph said. “I understand you might have got caught off guard. Once we’ve given direction to our senior administrator, we can’t micromanage the way that she handles it after that.”
Councilperson Adam Heitbrink responded to some of the concerns he’d heard from Carlisle about the RFP.
“There were two questions that were on there, how many employees, and how many events have you handled. That made you feel uncomfortable. The way I look at that is we’re just trying to get information on the company. And it’s not trying to weed you guys out. People out in the public that personally attacked all of us here. We can’t have that. We want to move forward. There’s no offense intended.”
Kotter said that the event was being coordinated in a method that would prevent any failure.
“We’ve got to do it one and done to start with  our point, though, is that we’re not trying to put you out. Think about how stupid we all look if we have this day and we run out of capacity. I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to hear people say they were in line for five hours and the roll offs were all full and they had to leave,” said Kotter. “We have to go big or go home. We cannot fail.”
Kevin’s wife, Amy, spoke to the council members and suggested clearer communication.
“I feel like from all the discussions that took place and what everybody has been through, what we kind of finalized on and ended up with after the discussions was that the citywide cleanup idea was going to have better communication between how it was going to work and between the haulers. So then to just have the email come in with the RFP without any inkling of a discussion before that is what gets everybody excited,” Amy advised.
Bruce asked the council if they didn’t not submit RFPs for the upcoming clean-up if they would be eliminated from future events. The council advised that would not be the case at all, and the RFP was strictly informational.
“If this is beyond what your capabilities are, the RFPs will tell me what you can do. I don’t know how many roll offs you have and I don’t know how big they are and I don’t know what kind of trucks you have,” said Kotter.
Councilperson John Haidsiak felt that the city had a new problem.
“This started out as a simple, good idea. And now it’s bloomed into a big mess. I just can’t see why or how when we started with something simple that was workable, it’s turned into this. It’s asinine that it did,” said Haidsiak.
Bradley said every project that the city did would require details so the council did not end up in a firestorm.
With the concerns of Bruce and Carlisle addressed, the council held no further discussion on clean-up days.