Buncombe County, in response to state mandates, increased its tipping fee at the landfill, and didn’t want to negotiate with the City of Asheville for any special rates. In response, Asheville City Council will be looking at some options for gaining market share in the trash collection business servicing its Central Business District this Tuesday.
The first takes advantage of government’s manifest destiny to outdo WalMart in its ability to use its profits on, say, toothbrush sales to put manufacturers of gardening tools out of business. It proposes that the city, just replace the private-sector trash collectors. The NC School of Government, however, suggests the city might have to compensate the affected companies.
The second option would be for the city to use taxpayer dollars to launch an “aggressive marketing” strategy to “fight†for customers currently serviced by the private sector. The third option would be for the city to superimpose itself as the Overlord of Trash and start exacting tribute for what the private sector is handling just fine without it. I think I detected leanings toward Option 3 in the staff report, on the grounds that the cost of licensing and shuffling papers is much less than actually doing anything value-added for society.
However, it is my contention that the city should opt for a hybrid of Options 2 and 3: Set up a licensing structure that is so onerous that the private-sector providers willingly hand over their businesses to the government.
