PANAMA CITY BEACH — City Manager Mario Gisbert is planning to bring back a list of proposals calling for possible franchises for garbage haulers or mandatory trash pickup.
The Panama City Beach City Council at its last meeting shot down a motion by Councilman Keith Curry and seconded by Councilwoman Josie Strange to let the issue die.
Instead, Gisbert said Monday he will bring back several options to the council, most likely a couple of meetings from now, to see whether they want to move ahead.
“I’m going to start meeting again with the haulers and find out what options are available and what options are not,” he said. “I have to meet with the lawyer and find out what we can put rules to and not put rules to.”
He said the current problem is people who have not hired haulers and put their garbage in someone else’s can, adding that this does not sound problematic.
“But (the garbage) is a problem when they put it on the trunk of their car instead of in the trunk of their car — they don’t want to stink up the trunk — then it falls off the trunk of the car and the city has to pick it up because it’s somewhere on the highway. It’s also a problem because the city cannot have public garbage cans, because what happens is that whenever I put a city garbage can out, I’ll find household garbage inside that garbage can.”
The issue came to the forefront this past July the Fourth weekend, when garbage was strewn all over the beach. The estimated 250,000 tourists that flooded the beach over the Fourth of July weekend left about 88 tons of trash and 10 truckloads of abandoned tents.
The Bay County Tourist Development Council at the time encouraged the city of Panama City Beach and Bay County to adopt universal trash pickup, requiring all property owners to pay a fee for trash pickup. It’s a proposal that has been brought up several times before but never had the votes required to pass on the council or the County Commission.
There is no mandatory trash service along the beach today, leaving homeowners and businesses the option of deciding whether to hire a hauler or find other ways to dump their trash.
Bay County Commissioner Mike Thomas said last summer that it is time for the county and city to adopt mandatory trash pickup. The garbage pickup fee could be added onto water bills, which on the beach goes out to city and unincorporated residents, so a new billing system would not have to be set up. Thomas has said that for the plan to work, it must be adopted by both the city and county.
Gisbert said the challenge in the past was the proposals would have given the garbage pickup to one or two haulers, and there are several more than that in the city. State law requires a three-year notice when a hauler is about to be put out of business.
Council’s view: The Beach Council last week directed Gisbert to only come back with proposals where residents could pick their own haulers. He said Monday he will not bring back proposals where any haulers get exclusive territories.
Councilman John Reichard said council members have been concerned that with franchise agreements, families would no longer be able to pick haulers of their choice. “I’d like to avoid that,” he said.
Strange questioned the fairness of forcing residents who only live here six months to have to pay a mandatory pickup fee.
“Are they going to have to pay for (garbage pickup) year-round?” she said.
Gisbert replied that could be the case if they want to maintain their water service, but Strange said residents don’t want to have to turn off their water when they leave.
The council tried to address the issue of the cans and bags being an eyesore in August, when it passed an ordinance that garbage cans on residential lots fronting Front Beach Road or Oleander Drive can no longer be visible to pedestrians standing in the right of way.
Curry at the last meeting questioned why the city was bringing the issue up again, considering the laws on the books.
“In developing a franchise agreement, what problem are we trying to solve here?” he said.
Councilman Rick Russell said renters in many neighborhoods think there is garbage pickup and put their bags out by the road. He said the cans will sit there until someone else hauls it or the cans fall over and trash is scattered all over the pavement.
Curry replied that this is a code enforcement issue.
“When I hear this word ‘franchise,’ I’m totally against this,” he said. “The next thing you are going to charge me is a fee.”
Mayor Gayle Oberst said she is not for mandatory pickup but supports franchise agreements with haulers.
“If we had a franchise (with garbage haulers), the city could at least have a little bit of control,” she said. “We could say things like, ‘You need to have “X” trucks in such shape.’ ”