We’ve had a number of questionable zonings for waste transfer stations that have been purchased by Bannister campaign contributors (JB White and Mark Gary) – both these questionable deals have been publically reported in the GDP. Do you wonder how this will turn out?

Let me sum it up:

- A bad garbage handling plan gets voted in.

- Bad plan halted by courts.

- Blame all problems on GC&B and sever ties with them – thus creating a business opportunity for somebody else to handle the garbage (I wonder who that might be?).

- Then create the bogus Beaudreau committee to collect public opinion which we’ve all heard before anyway. The difference is Beaudreau gets press coverage this time.

- Then let the county hire a consultant who will be paid a bunch of money to redo what the committee has already done so the process starts all over.

- Bannister’s friends create new waste transfer and recycling centers using Bannister, Lasseter and Kenerly to give them the required three votes (as has already been done).

- Then Bannister votes the new waste plan in and sends all the garbage to his buddies who now have garbage handling businesses (see above).

- Nothing that Beaudreau did will have helped one bit except to divert public attention away from Bannister. Maybe that’s been the point all along?

Why did he load the group with people that were his suporters should be a question the five or six “non chosen” people need to get Beaudreau to answer. I mean he hand picked his people so the resuluts would be his.

Why did legal never get involved in this is even a larger questions! I even questioned this prior to the voting in into law and have emails from legal say they looked into it.

Why dids Breaudreau never let any of thge committee knows about the RFP? This only makes you wonder what else he and the otehr BOC members will hide from the people off the county.

How are some aware that the other BOC members did not approve of this Blue Ribbon Committee?

I applaud Mack in his efforts to be open and honest and only wish Mike Beaudreau had half his integrity.

The fact is that the current waste plan we are operating under meets the state mandate and this is what the citizens need to know. We were lead down a road believing we were not meeting the state mandate only to find out that was a lie.

I hope all the BOC have a great time the the opening day of the taxpayer stadium next week. i really wonder how they can look at themselves in the mirror after all of this.

I would voite for Roy barnes for govenor so he can keep a close eye on Gwinnett in the future and its trash plan.

I leave you with this one question, If Gwinnett has severed ties with Gwinnett clean and Beautiful who ownes the land on Sattelite Blvd. where the recyle bank operates out of. If it is county owned I want to see a contract, if not they need to vacate the premise.

GCB is an organization whose time has passed and they operate with decades old philosophy.

We had no offical status or authority; it was rumored that the BOC as a whole was not in favor of the panel.

I have not addressed each indiv BOC member as regarding their opinion, so I cannot say one way or the other;

I am not a spokseman for the committe, and therefore cannot be criticized by folks who may want to do a Texas Two Step on the issue. I am a spokesman for me.

Basically the road to hell is in this case paved with good intentions,some of which went bad from the onset.

THe BOC might have better served the county by thouroghly researching the GC&B direction, and looking at what was coming out of that; and the ‘independent’ corporation they were setting up.

The county legal dept for reasons unkown; is said to have never looked into the issue, and the BOC voted their approval to GC&B plan hook line and sinker, without (apparently) regard to it’s affect on private enterprise, choice, or ongoing supportive cost.

The process was flawed at any rate as GC&B changed the number of haulers it was allowing into the program after the fact.And completely elimnated choice for the citizens regarding haulers, and at the flip of a swtich was to shut down a raft of private enterprise.

For years GC&B had done a remarkable job with it’s mission, I think they mistakenly strayed a bit too far
in it’s attempt to administer the County trash plan; and comply (attempt)with state waste management directives.Albeit taking on too many at once.
now we have the BOC after giving GC&B virtually blanket approval- pointing fingers at them.

What we have here was a need to get the county on board with mandatory trash collection process along with a robust recycling effort.Commendable on its face

Had that been the focus from the onset, and then devoting future, thoughtful and phased in efforts to dealing with complaints of too much truck traffic, and a number of other issues,

the county would not be spending more money defending itself, against lawsuits from haulers.., than it would have in retrospect by properly devoting due dilligence at the onset by ‘county legal’ , in the first place to the GC&B proposal and all of its ramificatiions, and to question even if it was a proper bid procedure.

This has turned into a never ending story; the outcome of this lawsuit, will likely spur an appeal, and depending on that outcome a possible (high ticket)lawsuit by haulers that were initially awarded contract by GC&B.

There are still several haulers ‘waiting in the bushes’ to get their licks also.

All that being said; The counting is due to award a contract to a consultant that I project will bill out betwen $275,000 and $500,000. to provide an assement
of what to do in a county (unicorporated)solid waste management plan, and how the citzens feel about it

GC&B did a study,some time back and recently The ‘Blue Ribbon committee’ participated in a traveling road show of citizen attendence to arrive at many of the same conclusions that the consultant is being asked to provide in the RFP

It begs the question of why we are willing to spend so much now when we handed over about $1.5 million dollares to have GC&B come up with a “solution”, and never gave it any legal oversight.

That means with the new study, we will have spent about $2 million dollars to be back at square one, and still facing a mountain of legal expenses.,

when the consultant is done it will be intersting to see how many conclusions mirror or ring similar to the results the ‘Blue Ribbon’ panel concluded. (at no cost)

Expanding on the trash issue is that Gwinnett County may now be considering building yet another recycling plant, which would eliminate more private enterprise, as private enterprise can now handle that stream.