In Arlington, Texas, a quiet rebellion in the fall of 2011 stopped the city’s plans to launch a more rigorous recycling program, with mandatory rolling carts and two price increases in the coming year. Residents squawked to their city representatives that they didn’t have anywhere to store the carts, which they believed would get blown over and be difficult to handle.
Instead, city leaders considered a pilot program to begin in January 2012, but that idea was scrapped, too.
Even though a household’s monthly trash bill went up by almost 30 cents Oct. 1, 2011, Arlington residents get to keep — for now — their twice-weekly unlimited trash pickups and their little recycling bins.
Moneywise, that’s good news for Arlington residents, who have one of the least-expensive trash plans in the region. That’s because Arlington didn’t follow suit as some other cities did when they converted to once-a-week pickups, with trash and recycling restricted to the provided bins.
Arlington residents still pay about half of what Fort Worth residents pay for a single weekly pickup, with trash limited to a rolling bin.
But as readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, there’s another part of this quiet rebellion that could easily be missed. It’s about a penny on each monthly bill. Doesn’t sound like much, but that penny signifies a whole lot more.
The penny became an obsession for one resident, Richard Weber, a former city employee who is now probably Arlington’s biggest gadfly. To understand why the penny matters, it’s probably best to understand Weber, a 55-year-old part-time postal worker who these days delivers mail in Kennedale.
Until 2005, Weber worked 20 years for the city as a computer programmer. Then he says he complained to management about waste in City Hall. He was facing a demotion, which he appealed. In the end, he resigned and felt “a little bitter,” he says. But even before he left, he started sending newsletters about city problems to a small group of friends.
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After he left, he ran for City Council three times: 2006, 2007 and 2009. Lost all three. But he also started covering City Hall as a gadfly journalist for his expanded newsletter, Arlington Spectator, a weekly that he e-mails to 400 city residents. In three years, he says he has published about 175 issues.
His reports diligently share City Hall happenings in his personal style. His most-remembered line came in one issue when he called a council member a “political prostitute” who “came into the evening session with no manhood, sporting his tightly clad mini and six-inch heels.” No surprise, he says, that council members pay little attention to him.
Here’s where that penny comes in. After City Hall released news of a 28-cent trash increase with Republic Waste Services, from $11.94 to $12.23 a month, Weber went home and did the math. He quickly realized that the increase was 29 cents instead of the 28 cents the city reported.
Weber believed that meant the bill should be $12.22 a month and not $12.23. A penny isn’t much, but multiply 100,000 residential accounts by 12 months a year.
Weber stood up at a council meeting before the vote on the trash increase and complained, but the council approved the increase anyway.
Then he started writing city officials. At first, he didn’t get a complete answer. Then city budget director Mike Finley met with Weber. It all comes down to a rounding problem. This year the increase is actually 28.35 cents, but when sales tax and a franchise fee are added to each bill, the final amount was above the half-a-cent rounding mark. So the bill was rounded up to $12.23. But Arlington residents shouldn’t feel bad. Last year, the final penny was rounded down.
Even though council members may pay no heed to Weber, city officials did. Interim City Manager Bob Byrd wrote to him, “I apologize for any confusion.” Byrd told me, “A penny means a lot to everybody in this day and age. The lesson we took away is we should have provided more information to council, and more information to Richard.”
Budget director Finley said, “Richard’s a pretty smart guy. He’s looking at this stuff. We could have done a better job putting in the details.”
Weber told me, “I just get more and more confident that I’m asking the right questions.”
He now turns his attention to expected increases in recycling fees. He doesn’t question the need for recycling; he questions the costs. As he told council last month, “Please do not try to tell me this is only a little increase. This council continues to add little increases that continue to add up.”
A penny here. A penny there. At least somebody is paying attention.
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Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber
