Good evening Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, Council members,

My wife and I are longtime admirers and regular visitors to your wonderful community. As the CRA chair within the City of Crestview, I have particular admiration for your thriving downtown district. Amenties like Wahoos Stadium and events like gallery night speak well to the long way the city has come in the last 20 years.

This evening, however, I am here on behalf of Adams Sanitation. Adams is a growing waste management company with operations in Okaloosa, Santa Rosa and Walton Counties. Having carefully reviewed the Sanitation Rate Study and Business Plan supporting the pending rate increase proposal, I felt it important to share an industry perspective before you make your decision.  

I believe strongly in the value of local government. Cities and counties perform important functions that the private sector is poorly suited to provide. No one wants for-profit police or parks. However, I believe equally strongly that there are services the private sector is better equipped to provide. Having reviewed your rate and service model, I can say unequivocally that Adams Sanitation could match your current service levels at your current pricing, and do so while delivering high customer service and earning a fair profit without the proposed rate increase you’ll discuss tonight. 

However, I am not here to pitch Adams Sanitation. Instead, I’d simply like to suggest the study you are relying on is insufficient in its scope for an informed decision. The consultant didn’t evaluate the department’s efficiency or performance compared to other municipal solid waste services. Additionally,  the scope of the report did not allow for the benchmarking of the department against the private sector. 

The only thing this report did do was quantify how much more money your citizens would need to pay in order to maintain the status quo. 

It’s a bleak status quo, too. One which involves a department operating at a financial loss. One where less than 70% of customers rate the department with 4 or 5 stars. 

As a private enterprise, we are driven to operate efficiently so as to be profitable while maintaining excellent customer service. Indeed, in our last customer survey over 88% of respondents awarded our team with 4 or 5 stars.

Again, the point here is that for you to be able to make a fully informed decision, a more thorough comparison of alternatives is required. 

There are many options to be explored and no shortage of competitors within the market to make proposals. It could be that a hybrid system is most appropriate with the City maintaining those portions of the operation that it truly excels at. Maybe that’s picking up yard waste collection as they do in the City of Niceville or maybe it is some other variation. It is also entirely possible that after a thorough analysis this Council makes the decision to raise rates and maintain the status quo. However, without a broader analysis, I am not sure that citizens can have confidence in the decision to raise rates so drastically. 

Should the City decide to re-evaluate and seek input from the industry, our team would certainly be honored to participate in that conversation. Again, thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening and thank you for your service. I am well aware that it can often be a thankless role.