Mayor Tory, allies push ahead with plan to outsource garbage pickup
City staff say an analysis on the cost of private versus public garbage collection needs to be updated.
Thestar.com
Nov. 14, 2016
By Jennifer Pagliaro
The mayor and council allies plan to push ahead with promises to outsource garbage collection east of Yonge St. ahead of an updated report on whether it will actually save the city money.
Councillor Jaye Robinson, chair of the public works committee and a member of Tory’s executive, says she plans to request that city staff come back to a January meeting with options for outsourcing - including a process that would allow the union to bid for that work.
An update from city staff Monday outlined “significant changes” since the outsourcing debate was deferred last year, including new collection data and a new collective agreement with city workers.
Staff requested time to prepare an additional report with that information for January 18. Robinson plans to endorse that request and also push for staff to report on next steps at the same time.
“We feel it’s time to stop studying it and get moving,” Robinson told the Star. “This issue’s been out there for years.”
Any decision on outsourcing would need to be approved by council.
On Monday, the mayor’s office referred questions about the plan to Robinson.
Though Tory promised to contract out the city’s remaining public collection as he faced off against the Ford brothers in the 2014 election campaign, a city staff analysis in September 2015 found privatizing east-end collection may actually cost the city more.
At that time, Tory and others challenged the staff report, criticizing their analysis for, Tory said, leaving “unanswered questions.” The staff report was reviewed by third party Ernst & Young, which found the analysis to be “reasonable.”
The public works and infrastructure committee punted the debate to this fall, giving upcoming negotiations with the union representing city employees, CUPE Local 416, as a reason to delay.
Monday’s hold-over report from the city’s new general manager for solid waste management services Jim McKay requested more time to prepare an additional report for January. McKay took over from the previous head of solid waste, Beth Goodger, who departed shortly after the release of the outsourcing report in 2015.
“It’s becoming a hallmark of this administration that they want their own facts - on transit, on public finance and now on garbage,” said Councillor Gord Perks, who is critical of Tory’s mayoralty. “If they don’t like the facts they’re presented with, they ask the staff to go generate a different set of facts. It’s a bad way to govern.”
Tory has acknowledged that staff had warned him when he took office that the costs savings were not what they were predicted to be during the campaign. That is in part because of increased efficiency in collection in the east after west-end services were privatized, staff have reported.
Staff earlier reported there is $11 million in annual savings from the west-end privatization.
When staff last analyzed additional privatization they compared existing contracting-out costs to future costs to contract out east-end services. That earlier analysis found public collection for a suburban district in Scarborough could cost $20 million less between 2017 and 2023 than privatized collection costs in a comparable Etobicoke district.
Matt Figliano, executive vice-president for CUPE Local 416, said in an email that “no new information will change the fact that privatizing waste collection east of Yonge would place quality of service at risk.”
“We ratified a four-year contract earlier this year, and now, they’re threatening to fire the very same people they signed that agreement with. All we are asking for is some decency and respect by the city in exchange for dedicated members who do important work for all Torontonians.”
Robinson said one of the options she wants the city to consider for outsourcing is managed competition, which she said could allow the union to bid on the work alongside private companies.
