Outsourcing: Despite complaints, Ford praises garbage collection
KELLY GRANT CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF — The Globe and Mail
Last updated Monday, Aug. 13 2012, 9:06 PM
Mayor Rob Ford is pleased with the performance of Toronto’s new private garbage collector, despite more than 1,000 complaints about missed or late trash pickups during the company’s first week on the job.
Mr. Ford praised Green For Life Environmental Corp.’s work as “great” and “fantastic” on Monday as he left a news conference to mark the opening of Ryerson University’s new athletic centre. inside the old Maple Leaf Gardens.
The mayor ignored a followup question and his office declined to elaborate on the mayor’s comments.
If Toronto’s mayor does believe GFL’s debut week was “fantastic,” he’s out of step with his own point man on garbage. , who has expressed disappointment with GFL’s slow start.
On Friday, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the public works committee, said that if GFL doesn’t get its crews up to speed by the end of the month, the slow start could make it difficult to contract out more of the city’s curbside collection.
GFL started collecting garbage, recycling and organics from 165,000 homes between Yonge Street and the Humber River last Tuesday.
The company’s contract with the city requires it to finish pickup by 6 p.m., but last week GFL’s lime-green trucks were still rolling through city streets after 9:30 p.m., according to the city’s solid waste department.
Contracting out trash pickup in another part of Toronto – GFL already handles curbside collection in Etobicoke – was a major victory for Mr. Ford, who in 2010 campaigned on outsourcing garbage.
He promised at the time to privatize trash collection citywide, but has since said he won’t push for privatization east of Yonge Street unless he wins a second term in 2014.
Nearly all of the garbage that had been left on curbsides as of the end of day Friday was picked up over the weekend, said Jim Harnum, general manager of the city’s solid waste department.
“We think we got the majority of the garbage off,” he said Monday. “We still [had] a few outstanding calls, probably 15 or 20 calls today. To our knowledge, that’s been picked up.”
When pickup resumes Tuesday – there’s no residential collection on Mondays – Mr. Harnum said he’s expecting GFL’s performance to improve, as it started to toward the end of last week. He said the company is tweaking routes and increasing the number of trucks it runs at the beginning of the day to 95 from its original plan of 80.
When the city ran the service with in-house employees, it used 107 trucks, Mr. Harnum said.
What world does our mayor occupy? Certainly not the one we live in.
If he believes the debacle that was the debut of G-arbage F-or L-ife's private sector 'rubbish' pickup was 'great' and 'fantastic' then his standards are shockingly well below what the City of Toronto expects.
Follow up questions regarding the mess made by privatized solid waste collection were met with silence both by the mayor and hiss administration. Shocker!
Please note my privatrization gurus, that GFL has NOW upped their manpower and their equipment, just as I stated they would have to. This now brings them to the lower end of possbily fulfilling the requirements of their contract, however at a cost to them. Basically, their profit margin will be wiped out. They will not make a penny on their contract this year, or for the next 6 years thereafter.
It's not 'rocket science' guys. There was a very practical reason why the next lowest bid was $2.5million higher than GFL's bid while the next highest average bids were about $4million more than GFL's bid and it has to do with fulfilling the terms of the contract while earning a profit.
The trucks of the other bidders are basically the same. The crewmen of the other bidders are basically the same. It is the ownership and management that are different and those failed bidders were honest enough to realize the costs of the bid. GFL was not.
Have you guys seen the poor GFL crewmen? Running from truck to garbage bins, one after the other, from home to home, from street to street, continuously all day and night long. Undermanned and underequippped deliberately. You must feel empathy with these poor souls, for they are just trying to do their job and earn a living while working for a company and management that could care less about them. But isn't that most often the case between ownership, management and that factor or unit of production called 'labor'.
KELLY GRANT CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF — The Globe and Mail
Last updated Monday, Aug. 13 2012, 9:06 PM
Mayor Rob Ford is pleased with the performance of Toronto’s new private garbage collector, despite more than 1,000 complaints about missed or late trash pickups during the company’s first week on the job.
Mr. Ford praised Green For Life Environmental Corp.’s work as “great” and “fantastic” on Monday as he left a news conference to mark the opening of Ryerson University’s new athletic centre. inside the old Maple Leaf Gardens.
The mayor ignored a followup question and his office declined to elaborate on the mayor’s comments.
If Toronto’s mayor does believe GFL’s debut week was “fantastic,” he’s out of step with his own point man on garbage. , who has expressed disappointment with GFL’s slow start.
On Friday, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the public works committee, said that if GFL doesn’t get its crews up to speed by the end of the month, the slow start could make it difficult to contract out more of the city’s curbside collection.
GFL started collecting garbage, recycling and organics from 165,000 homes between Yonge Street and the Humber River last Tuesday.
The company’s contract with the city requires it to finish pickup by 6 p.m., but last week GFL’s lime-green trucks were still rolling through city streets after 9:30 p.m., according to the city’s solid waste department.
Contracting out trash pickup in another part of Toronto – GFL already handles curbside collection in Etobicoke – was a major victory for Mr. Ford, who in 2010 campaigned on outsourcing garbage.
He promised at the time to privatize trash collection citywide, but has since said he won’t push for privatization east of Yonge Street unless he wins a second term in 2014.
Nearly all of the garbage that had been left on curbsides as of the end of day Friday was picked up over the weekend, said Jim Harnum, general manager of the city’s solid waste department.
“We think we got the majority of the garbage off,” he said Monday. “We still [had] a few outstanding calls, probably 15 or 20 calls today. To our knowledge, that’s been picked up.”
When pickup resumes Tuesday – there’s no residential collection on Mondays – Mr. Harnum said he’s expecting GFL’s performance to improve, as it started to toward the end of last week. He said the company is tweaking routes and increasing the number of trucks it runs at the beginning of the day to 95 from its original plan of 80.
When the city ran the service with in-house employees, it used 107 trucks, Mr. Harnum said.
What world does our mayor occupy? Certainly not the one we live in.
If he believes the debacle that was the debut of G-arbage F-or L-ife's private sector 'rubbish' pickup was 'great' and 'fantastic' then his standards are shockingly well below what the City of Toronto expects.
Follow up questions regarding the mess made by privatized solid waste collection were met with silence both by the mayor and hiss administration. Shocker!
Please note my privatrization gurus, that GFL has NOW upped their manpower and their equipment, just as I stated they would have to. This now brings them to the lower end of possbily fulfilling the requirements of their contract, however at a cost to them. Basically, their profit margin will be wiped out. They will not make a penny on their contract this year, or for the next 6 years thereafter.
It's not 'rocket science' guys. There was a very practical reason why the next lowest bid was $2.5million higher than GFL's bid while the next highest average bids were about $4million more than GFL's bid and it has to do with fulfilling the terms of the contract while earning a profit.
The trucks of the other bidders are basically the same. The crewmen of the other bidders are basically the same. It is the ownership and management that are different and those failed bidders were honest enough to realize the costs of the bid. GFL was not.
Have you guys seen the poor GFL crewmen? Running from truck to garbage bins, one after the other, from home to home, from street to street, continuously all day and night long. Undermanned and underequippped deliberately. You must feel empathy with these poor souls, for they are just trying to do their job and earn a living while working for a company and management that could care less about them. But isn't that most often the case between ownership, management and that factor or unit of production called 'labor'.
