by Randy Sanne

Recently Al Pettit, co-chair of the structure advisory committee commented on an article written by Ms. Geddry titled Parry characterizes protecting county taxpayers as “punitive”. His comments included several statements that misrepresented the truth and deserve clarification. I want to run my campaign for commissioner as I have tried to live my life. I believe in honesty and openness and always try to ensure that I make statements based on fact supported by proof. For information on my history and qualifications please go to www.randysanne.com.

The article refers to a proposal I have made several times since embarking on the effort to keep the Coos County Solid Waste facility (CCSW) open, run by the county, and operating as an incinerator site by assessing a system benefit fee, based upon tonnage, only if a trash hauler chooses to take county garbage to facilities outside the county.

Mr. Pettit begins his comment with a claim that I: “recently went on record stating that Solid Waste is a stand-alone, for-profit facility that does not rely on the General Fund”. I have NEVER said that Solid Waste is a “for-profit facility”, nor have I ever used the term “stand alone” to describe it. I have always said that the CCSW is NOT in business to make a profit, it is a service that the citizens wanted and has operated on the revenue it receives from its customers. I challenge Mr. Pettit to produce the record he claims to have. I often comment on statements people make on record but I ensure I can provide the proof, such as my recent statement at a Joint Governance/Structure Committee meeting on 12/7/11 in which Mr. Pettit claimed that Coos County is months away from going broke which is completely false. He made the statement approximately 3-1/2 minutes into his power point presentation.

Mr. Pettit goes on in the article to claim that my proposal is a price fixing scheme. “If this is accurate then why does the facility need a price-fixing scheme?” the following is an excerpt from Business-Law.freeadvice.com: “Price fixing can happen several ways. Businesses can agree to set their prices high, so that consumers have no choice but to buy at the high price. They can also agree to set mark-ups, sales, surcharges or discounts on goods or services at the same rate. Businesses can also agree to set their maximum purchasing price so that a seller of a product, service or commodity will be forced to sell at the set price. Price fixing can also happen in the credit market, where companies agree to standardize credit terms to consumers.” “It is important to remember that illegal price fixing only occurs when there is an agreement between businesses to fix prices. A business, acting on its own, may use legitimate efforts to obtain the best price they can.” My proposal of a “system benefit fee” has already been adopted in Lane County for the same reason I am proposing it for Coos County. It is not designed to increase revenue or force any hauler to increase the amount of refuse they are bringing us now. It is designed to ensure that the revenue received by the county from long standing agreements with our commercial haulers doesn’t decrease just because one hauler wants to change their agreement. I also provided a Supreme Court ruling that found that counties have the right to insist that ALL garbage generated within their border be processed through county owned facilities which can be found in the above mentioned article or on my website at www.ourcountysite.yolasite.com . You can also read a description of Lane Counties “system benefit fee” there. I am not proposing that we change the current agreement to the benefit of the county, just that we be made whole by this fee if Waste Connections opts to haul more garbage out of the county.

Coos County has had long standing agreements with its commercial haulers, every local hauler but Waste Connections (formerly Les’ Sanitation) bring all their garbage to the Coos County Solid Waste facility, and Waste Connections is expected to bring all unincorporated waste (meaning everything collected from residents living outside the Coos Bay/North Bend city limits) to the CCSW.

Finally, while Mr. Pettit is not the first person to misrepresent the cost difference between the CCSW and Waste Connections he has certainly achieved a new level of hyperbole. The tipping fee that the county currently charges is factored into the price that the haulers charge their customers, and a system benefit fee would not change that, so Mr. Pettit’s statement that citizens’ cost of service would increase by two to three hundred percent is not only false its absurd and unfounded. At a Solid Waste Advisory Committee meeting held in Coos Bay in 2010 Steve Allen, former Coos County Human Resources Director, asked representatives from Waste Connections the question; if hauling garbage to Corvalis is so much cheaper than bringing it to CCSW would they be willing to pass the savings on to the customer? He received no answer.

I have personally spoken to Mr. Pettit and have told him that I appreciate and respect differences of opinion, and that he and I will probably disagree more than we will agree, however I had hoped that our differences would be based on different interpretations of the facts. Mr. Pettit seems determined to promote a message of fear and impending doom by any means regardless of facts.