Mike Knox - Former City Council Member Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, but I wanted at the landfill. Okay, six twenty
two is our time here in Houston's Warning News. Mike
Knox's former city council member, joins us to talk about
trying to figure out what's wrong with trash pick up
in the City of Houston. It doesn't seem like it
should be a complicated issue, Mike.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, you know you're right, Jimmy, And by the way,
thank you for having me on your program this morning. Yeah.
We were dealing with that back when I was on council.
And the issue is that everybody wants to bandiate it
and this new program basically it reduces it makes it
easier for the city to not pick up your trash.

(00:39):
In other words, it's up to you to call the
trash department and tell them when you're ready for your
heavy trash to go. That's like, that's like self checkout
right now. We pay taxes. We pay taxes and the
property taxes and part of that goes to garbage collection.
And so the rub here is you're paying taxes, the

(01:01):
city's supposed to pick up your garbage. Well, the city
wants to go to a garbage fee system, which is
what most cities and counties in Texas do where you
have to pay extra for garbage collection. The problem is
it's it's it's you know, melded into our property taxes.

(01:22):
So why am I paying more for the same service
I'm supposed to get. The other problem is the city's
just not very good at There are certain things that
governments are good at and the other things they're not,
And providing customer service is not one of the things
government's really good at. So I think, you know, it's
a it's a nice run at band aid for the

(01:44):
mayor to do this, but I think ultimately they're going
to have to go with I was always an opponent
of the garbage fee because they wanted to use the
city department, the city trash department to spend that money.
I think, if we're going to go with a garbaemage fee,
we need to hire contractors, get mad at and fire.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Why not privatize it? Why not?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
If that's what I mean?

Speaker 1 (02:07):
The problem is not that we're not spending enough money
that the problem is we're not getting the service over
broken down trucks or whatever the problems are. Let's hire
private companies in order to take care of the problem right, and.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Let those private companies compete for sections of the city.
In other words, you know, you could have multiple contractors
working the entire city. And now the thing is business
is motivated for customer service. If you're not satisfied with
your garbage collection service, then you're going to hire another contractor.
Where the current contractor wants to keep you happy, so

(02:39):
they're going to show up on time, They're going to
pick up the trash. Why do you even get trash
more than once a week? So but right now you
have once a week garbage collection once and yard pick up,
and then every other week you have recycled and then
once a month you have heavy trash. Well, you could
do a contract for the same probably same amount of

(03:00):
money and get that every week. You know, could get
all three of them every week.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Right, You don't have to don't have to have employees
working in the sanitation department. You don't have to provide
all those benefits. You don't have to. You don't have to,
you know, continually have to replace trucks and buy new
equipment or repair equipment to take a big burden off
off the city.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
And you could do a rebate on your property because
you're not paying for that service anymore. Right now, that's
not gonna happen. Now. I can tell you though, Joe,
we did need extra We probably need a garbage pickup
a city run department in the case of an emergency
like a hurricane or a flood or something where we've
got to pick up extra crash. But during the off season,

(03:40):
when we don't have those disasters, maybe that department could
go around picking up some of these dump sites that
fester around the city. They could just randomly drive around
and pick up dump sites and make the city a
lot cleaner. I mean, there's a lot of options that
I presented when I was on a council to all
these issues, and the course that didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Now we are here, let me quickly ask you about
this because we're running over on time. But it's a
question I always like to ask. Is The answer always
usually surprises me or surprises others when they hear it. Recycling.
What happens with the recycling from the City of Houston.
Where do those recycled materials go and how are they treated?

(04:25):
Do they end up in the landfill with the garbage?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Absolutely they do, because there's no market for the recyclable material.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
So why do we recycle them? Why do we recycle
because it makes.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
People feel good and they just feel like you're done.
Here's the cost to the city. This is something that
people need to think about. It costs twenty five dollars
a ton to deliver garbage to the landfill. It costs
eighty five dollars a toime to pick up and process
your recycling. Now we're supposed to get a rebate when

(04:56):
they sell the material. The city's supposed to get a rebate,
and that brings it back down to around twenty five
dollars a ton, But there's no market. So the recycling
facilities hang on to this garbage as long as they can.
When they need more room, they pick up the recycle
trash and they take it over to the dump and
charges another twenty five dollars and that costs in you, yeah,

(05:18):
one hundred and ten dollars a ton to put garbage
in the landfill where it was costing you twenty five dollars.
So that's it makes people feel good. People feel like
they want to be able to do that, and there's
just not a market. I mean, when China stopped buying cardboard,
or there's not even except for heavy metals, you know,
or ferris metals. There's really no market anywhere, you know,

(05:40):
for glass or paper, any of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
I've asked my Mike, I've asked everybody I've ever talked
to in the sanitation business this question, and the answer
is always the same. Recycling is a joke the way
we do it. We don't really end up recycling. Mike Knox,
Thank you, sir, appreciate your time. That's former City council
member Mike Knox,