Competitive Bidding Initiative for Garbage and Recycling Services, led by a broad coalition of environmentalists, property owners, ratepayers and good government advocates, qualifies in San Francisco.
From San Franciscans for Competitive Bidding
August 16, 2011
The sponsors of an initiative seeking to overturn an 80-year-old ordinance and create competitive bidding for refuse and recycling services have qualified their measure for the June 2012 ballot, the City’s Department of Elections announced today. The measure is designed to protect San Francisco ratepayers, achieve 100 percent recycling and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in franchise fees for the City and County of San Francisco.
Proponents and volunteers gathered 12,869 signatures in less than five weeks to qualify the initiative, despite operatives from Recology – the holder of the City’s highly lucrative garbage collection monopoly – deploying an expensive media campaign on both network and cable TV and funding a series of allegedly illegal actions to intimidate petition workers, harass petition signers, and buy or steal petition booklets.
After signature verification by the San Franciscans for Competitive Bidding campaign, 9,509 signatures from registered San Francisco voters were submitted to the Department of Elections for verification, substantially more than the 7,168 signatures required for qualification.
Tony Kelly, one of the measure’s proponents, said: “Our reason for launching this initiative is that, year after year, City-commissioned reports prove that we are missing out on franchise fees and other benefits to the community that a competitive bidding process would enable. We needed to do something to protect ratepayers and City services. The support we have seen, with thousands of signatures in one month in the face of Recology’s tactics, confirms that voters support competitive bidding to benefit ratepayers and our communities. We’re very happy to make this an election issue, throughout the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2012.”
Since the sponsors’ submittal of signatures to the Department of Elections, Recology has been in the news for a variety of questionable activities related to Mayor Ed Lee and the “Progress for All” campaign created to draft him for a run for office. Competing mayoral candidates have been lining up in support of the competitive bidding initiative, which is opposed by Mayor Lee.
Initiative proponent Quentin Kopp said: “I compliment and thank all the civic-minded San Franciscans who are recognizing the importance of obtaining the best possible rates for public services, in the face of the glaring failure of City Hall to do what every other Bay Area government has done — which is to get a contract and franchise fees for garbage and recycling services. It’s a necessary City fiscal policy, it should have been done by City Hall bureaucrats and politicians, but now, it will hopefully be done by the voters.”
The Hunger Site
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