Remember that song….?

Ya know the song by Lynyrd Skynyrd. called “That Smell”?

A classic of a song written by Ronnie Van Zant of the band in reference to what he saw as people around him ruining their lives with drugs.  The smell of heroin cooking is said to drive an addict back to the drug. 

Well, what am I leading to?  I was out to dinner last night at a nice local place with 6 people at the table. Some of these people are what I call influential in Peoria and of course the smell in the air was the smell of sizzling steaks.

Talk at the table got around to the garbage fee and the garbage totes we all are going to have and pay for via that slap in the face tax our council dreamed up a few years ago and now has decided to raise it by 110%.  The smell here was interesting.  After over 30 years of garbage collection by BFI disposal which later became (WM) Waste Management, all of a sudden there was a shift to another company, (PDC) Peoria Disposal Company, a local outfit unlike the national chain WM is.  PDC for years didn’t seem to want the local garbage contract for Peoria.  They had smaller surrounding towns and they had a very lucrative industrial waste business going.  Until a local group opposed the expansion of PDC’s landfill and adding some pretty hazardous waste to that site.  It seemed that PDC was land locked and limited on where it could haul waste without paying through the nose to ship it out of state.  Could be a fatal blow for a local company right?

Enter a new city council a few years back.  A Republican Mayor who is business friendly, well at least to his friend’s businesses and some young blood on the council.  A few on this council (no names) happen to be good friends with people from the PDC.  I mean, they traveled on trips together, swapping recipe kind of friends. So good friends, that PDC decided to submit a bid on the then upcoming bid for Peoria garbage collection.   It may have been even worked out, in a back room, that PDC would be sure to have the lower bid. How, you may ask?  Well when you have someone who knows what the bids are from other companies, in this case WM, then you might have a way to have your submitted bid, shall we say, just under the lowest?

You would say PAP! That would be corruption!  Yes, if it could be proved, but gee, a couple of council people got free totes from PDC dropped at their homes BEFORE the contract was even announced.  How nice of PDC to come out of no where and decide to just drop off a few top of the line totes, for free, to a few council people.  More smell?  A little bit more.  There seems to be a little worry over the Garbage Fee not going to garbage collection and being a budget time thing, the council needed funds but to raise a fee that has nothing to do with garbage, well, that would really smell considering some council people said this fee would never go up.  In fact, Turner, Mr. Wonderful,  was worried that $72 a year would be hard on fixed income people so bill it once a month and strip those poor people $6 at a time.  They did.

So at another one of those backroom parties, where some council members and PDC brass mingle, they came up with a hell of an idea.  You see, the contract PDC bid and won was kind of costing PDC money because of the new trucks required and equipment.  They needed to raise the next years contract and generate some other revenue.  Simple, require everyone in Peoria to have one of their totes, hike the garbage fee to cover the cost and of course to help with the city’s shortfalls.  PDC makes out like a bandit, gets an almost guarantee for many years of sole collection, Peoria gets funds it needs to help their pals down at the warehouse district and the Garbage Fee is actually being part used for garbage collection.  No more possible legal challenges to an unfair tax that now appears to never ever go away, again like it was promised.

Tell me I am wrong about this please.  People, we city citizens have been had again by the slick clowns we elect to trust with our funds.  Crime is everywhere and yet this group funnels money to their friends.  Just watch the warehouse district and take note of the friends of the council there and watch the money.

Now do you smell that smell?