in 2018, when the City passed it's ordinance to take over trash collection in St. Paul.

The City plan involved creating  a consortium that functioned as a monopoly.

The City plan prevented residents from sharing carts and opting out.

The efficiencies of scale should have  lowered total collection costs from $21 million to $14 million.

Despite City representations that its plan would be more economical, it actually increased the collection costs by about 33% ($21 million to $28 million.)

See the analysis by John Genereux.

We are an all-volunteer group of St. Paul residents who collected more than 6000 signatures in 2018, seeking a referendum on the ordinance that created the City's trash plan. This was a petition to put the citizens' right to a ballot vote on  plan.

We are not affiliated with any business or political party.

We succeeded in obtaining the requisite number of petition signatures.

The City, however refused to honor the "legally sufficient" Petition for a referendum vote on its new trash plan.    We were then forced to sue the City of St. Paul in order to sexercise our legal right to a ballot vote.  This is the matter of Clark, et al. v the City of St. Paul, et al., Ramsey County Court File # 62-CV-19-857.

Our lawsuit to put the City's trash plan Ordinance 18-39 on the November 5, 2019, citywide election ballot, required that we register as a Political Action Committee (PAC). Our committee includes many of the same St. Paul friends and neighbors who helped to gather the thousands of signatures that were submitted in support of the referendum.

Our PAC  raised the funds needed to pursue the lawsuit against the City. Our lawsuit vindicated our right to a ballot vote on the City's trash ordinance.  The City was found to have wrongfully denied our citizens the right to put its new trash plan to a popular vote.

The ultimate purpose was to return our residents to a lower cost trash collection system; support the rights of low, zero wasters, neighbors, multifamily, townhomes, and condos to share or opt-out of unnecessary trash services; and eliminate the unused plastic carts clogging our alleys and garages.

The City's plan survived the 2019 ballot vote.

Thereafter, our residents experienced numerous problems with missed pickups, billing errors.

In response, the City has put together a Garbage Advisory Board to review the current trash program and suggest ways to improve it.  See the City's  Garbage Advisory Committee website page.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us.