Speaker’s Override Votes Up in the Air

According to a council member very close to the situation, the Speaker will fall some votes short in his attempt to orchestrate an override of the mayor’s veto. What this will all mean for the remaining six months of his term is anyone’s guess (including what impact it will have on the budget negotiations).

In discussions with some of the dissidents, it appears that in exchange for their votes against an override some council members will insist that the mayor open 59th st. to at least 2,000 tons per day of commercial waste. No one seems willing, however, to specify just how the city will be able to channel this private sector waste to the transfer station. When asked, one staffer talked about legislating flow control (a fancy term for mandating that private garbage must go to a certain facility) or simply having DSNY unilaterally refuse to renew certain transfer station permits.

We can’t say we’re shocked since we’ve been predicting this direction all along. Let’s simply say that it is in the city’s plan to channel all commercial waste into city-owned or managed transfer stations. Once accomplished the cost of tipping will be controlled by the city and it goes without saying that it won’t be long before all of New York’s retailers will be fronting the cost of disposal for the city’s residential waste.

Which is precisely the reason why a number of people within the municipal sanitation monopoly oppose commercial waste disposers. Food waste is the cash crop in the private garbage mix and its elimination will remove the waste that the city would be able to heavily levy once disposal is mandated into municipally-run facilities.