Toledo City Council Tuesday night easily overturned Mayor Carty Finkbeiner's veto of its plan to use $2.51 million of capital improvement money left over from voters' rejection in September of the Safety First plan to instead help buy automated trash trucks and refuse containers.
Council voted 10-1 to override the veto. Councilman Betty Shultz voted against, and Councilman Lindsay Webb was not present.
Council President Joe McNamara said he offered the plan so the city could use the $2.51 million to pay 2010 debt-service costs to buy automated trash trucks and containers, which otherwise would have been paid for next year with general-fund money.
The city can instead apply that general-fund money to pay down any 2009 deficit that will be carried over into 2010, Mr. McNamara said.
Toledo's switch to automated refuse pickup will get rolling during the third week of November. The 180,000 new trash and recycling containers - it will cost the city $9.67 million to buy two for every household - will arrive in the city beginning Monday.
Council in July agreed to spend $12.2 million to buy 40 automated refuse trucks.Automated collection will begin in December, when the city plans to readjust its collection routes.
The city of Toledo will fully automate its trash collection by the end of March - almost two years after Mayor Finkbeiner first said officials would review using automated trucks.
Council also voted 8-3 last night in favor of hiring Resource Recycling Systems Inc. of Ann Arbor, for not more than $195,529 out of the city's solid waste trust fund, to help implement the switch to automated garbage collection.
Voting against were Councilmen Michael Ashford, Phillip Copeland, and Steven Steel.
Mr. Ashford said he would have preferred a local company or the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center to consult on the switch.
Councilman George Sar-
antou urged his colleagues to move forward with the plan.
"We have been messing around with this for 10 years," Mr. Sarantou said. "If we keep putting this off, we are not going to save the $3 million a year." He said most other cities have already automated trash collection.
In other business, council voted 10-1 to approve a new law that requires motorists traveling in the same direction as a bicycle to pass "on the left at a safe distance and not drive to the right side of the roadway for at least three feet" after passing the bicycle.
Councilman Tom Waniewski, who said the law was unenforceable, voted against it.
Contact Ignazio Messina at:
imessina@theblade.com
or 419-724-6171.
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