Last week County Supervisors approved an updated and revised contract with Burrtec Solid Waste Management. The new contract adds roughly 500 households from Morongo Basin’s unincorporated areas to the more than 7,000 households in Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms that already receive the service. All households in the mandatory service areas must separate organic food and garden waste from recyclables and non-recyclable, non-organic trash.
The reality of the situation is that the County really had no choice but to approve the updated Burrtec contract. Yes, eligible voters at the affected properties received what is called a “Prop 218” notice informing them of the proposed higher rates. And, yes, the notices included instructions on how they could cast what’s called a “protest vote.” And had 50 percent plus one of the eligible voters composed their own statements opposing the updated contract and included all required data such as their name, address, signature, and parcel number and sent it via first class mail to arrive prior to the hearing there would be no service changes.
But that didn’t happen as could have easily been predicted with these “protest ballots,” from the more than 7,700 Prop 218 notices mailed to affected voters just eight qualified protest ballots were received prior to last Tuesday’s hearing and deadline, far short of the roughly 3,800 needed to stop it.
So come October 1, some 500 plus households in the unincorporated communities adjoining existing Burrtec routes, will begin the mandatory separating of their trash among compostable organics, traditional recyclables, and regular non-organic household trash. And they’ll be paying more for the privilege.
