Look at what’s under the mattress. (WMP&I and Google images)

The Springfield City Council advanced major changes to the city’s solid waste policies on October 21. The policies Public Works czar Chris Cignoli presented are fairly comprehensive and run a wide gamut of garbage in the city. However, the changes also include a cost element, namely a higher price for city pickup of mattresses. The task itself is also becoming more expensive.

The Council had already sent the ordinance to committee twice. Maintenance & Development has held two hearings, one jointly with the Finance Committee. Councilors had considered a smaller fee increase. Others wanted a higher one to relieve the cost of mattress disposal. In the end, there was little appetite to hold the bill any longer.

Councilor Tracye Whitfield was absent from the debate. Councilor Sean Curran appeared shortly after the meeting began. Councilors Curran, Malo Brown, Zaida Govan, Brian Santaniello and Kateri Walsh participated remotely.

The Environment & Sustainability, Finance, General Government and Maintenance & Development committees all offered reports at the top of the meeting. Finance and Maintenance & Development’s reports previewed the debate later in the meeting. (The solid waste ordinance was last on the agenda.)

Debate on the item opened with Cignoli reiterating the bill’s highlights. Ward 6 Councilor Victor Davila had several questions, asking Cignoli detail procedure when radioactive material is found in waste.

Cignoli said that irradiated waste—usually from households with a human or animal cancer patients—manifests a few times a year. However, it is scanned at Bondi’s Island. It and the affected equipment are quarantined to allow the radioactive half-life to pass—usually a few days. There was a procedure if drivers or other DPW staff are exposed, but he said it rarely happened, if ever.

Cignoli has more time to for waste! (still via Focus Springfield)

As he had before, Cignoli explained Monday that the decision to raise the mattress fee from $8 to $16 a practical one. Other bulk items remain $8—or some multiple thereof—which is the cost per sticker today. Thus, merely doubling the fee will let residents simply add another sticker. Somewhere in between would require a new sticker.

However, Davila also worried that the higher fee would still not cover all disposal costs. As Cignoli explained at the September 23 meeting, the purpose of the fee is not necessarily to cover the cost of mattress removal. Rather, it is to deter property owners, mostly ones with management companies, abusing Springfield’s dirt-cheap bulk pickup fee.

It is technically illegal to transfer waste to Springfield to have it picked up rather than use whatever system is in the originating community. However, after the state mandated mattress recycling, it set in motion events that left Springfield with a pickup fee that is a fraction of what nearby municipalities charge. Cignoli hopes the higher fee will discourage the transport of mattresses into the city.

Because recycling is mandatory, it costs more for municipalities to dispose of them. Cignoli confirmed he is not looking to recover the total cost. Indeed, the annual trash fee residential property owners pay does not cover removal cost either. Davila, however, expressed displeasure that a low six-figure cost for mattress removal would remain even with a $16 fee.

Essentially, Davila was alluding to the broader spending debates that have consumed the city recently. Rapidly rising residential property values have kept the city in the black, but, some councilors complain, come at the cost of higher tax bills for residents.

But Davila ultimately gave a thumbs down to his own amendment. (WMP&I)

Davila moved to raise the fee to $24 instead. The proposal received a cool reception, so frosty that City Council President Michael Fenton took the extraordinary measure of seconding Davila’s change, without which the amendment would have failed. (Usually, the presiding officer avoids doing so although it is not forbidden.)

Ward 5 Councilor Lavar Click-Bruce typified councilors’ feeling that a higher fee might be appropriate, but not without more review. Yet, councilors showed no interest in another committee referral. Davila’s motion failed 1-11, with only Fenton voting for it in the end. First step passed unanimously.

Items before the trash fee had passed uneventfully. Comptroller Patrick Burns presented the September Revenue and Expenditure report. He raised no alarms about anything in it.

City Clerk Gladys Oyola-Lopez, who remains in charge of the Election Commission, presented the warrant for the November 5 election. She said there were no changes from the primary last month except for extended early voting hours. Oyola-Lopez added that about 800 people had voted early in person as of Monday.

The Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office released data on Friday that showed that figure had since cracked 1000. A little under 11,000 Springfield voters had turned in their ballots as of 4pm Friday.

The warrant received unanimous approval.

The Council accepted more than a dozen petitions to accept private ways as public roads in the city.

Cignoli also presented a $2.8 million grant from the state for reconstruction of West Street. West Street only runs from the North End Bridge to Plainfield Street, but the grant will include work on the latter road, too.

Fated to become history? (via Digital Commonwealth)

The DPW chief said the redesign will include safety improvements and prepare the road for the state’s plans to replace the North End Bridge. Officially the Arthur McKenna Bridge, the North End Bridge opened in 1924. It has undergone reconstruction before, but Cignoli said the state intends to spend $100 million on a new, wider bridge.

Councilors accepted the grant without dissent.

Four smaller grants for the Elder Affairs, Health & Human Services and Library departments received approval with one vote.

The Council also approved a $2.5 million bond for a feasibility study to replace Gerena School. The Brutalist behemoth on Birnie Avenue has long drawn concern and complaints. At-large Councilor Jose Delgado, whose daughter attends the school now, noted that Gerena and the Hampden County Courthouse were both late Brutalist structures with notorious water infiltration and reputations as  as a “sick buildings.”.

With the bond approved, the city can pursue the study which will be a step toward receiving funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

The final two items were also school-related. The Council approved a change to the city budget to account for the $587,478 more in state school assistance funding. While the state funds the vast majority of the city’s school budget, it is technically rolled into the overall city budget. The Council must still approve its bottom line figure with the additional state funding.

After that, the Council approved a five-year contract for time and attendance software for the schools. While the Council has little influence over the school budget, its acquiescence is necessary for contracts that exceed three years as with any department.

Patrick Roche, the schools’ chief financial and operations officer, explained the School Department was switching its employee time-keeping system. The successful bidder offered $50,000 in annual savings if the contract lasted five years.

President Fenton stepped down from the dais to comment on the authorization. He praised the School Department for coming to the Council with its bid complete rather than asking for authorization up front and then bidding.

“I have been on a crusade on this subject, regularly being asked to approve 3-year contracts before the bidding process is complete,” he said.

The authorization passed unanimously.

The debate over the particulars of the solid waste ordinance—and its mattress pickup fee—were substantive, if granular. However, given recent concerns about resident costs, there was not necessarily ardent opposition to an even higher fee. Indeed, Cignoli expects to return within a year to recommend whether to change the fee. (He urged councilors not to let him raise it unilaterally, believing they should make the call.)

(WMP&I)

The subtext is really spending. There is no opposition to spending among residents or councilors on principle. Rather, while the degree of the problem is debatable, councilors’ concern stems from residents’ tax bill complaints. The problem is mattress removal costs, like nearly all recent proposed solutions, are barely a drop in the bucket relative to $275 million the city collects in property taxes.

Moreover, as Boston discovered with its recent debate about the allocation of the burden, this topic is confounding. Plus, as much as residents grouse about tax bills, they seem equally unwilling—with some justification—to end an era of local government investment after decades of austerity