I Need Your Help. And You Need Mine.

The time is quickly approaching for the Village and its Commission to begin to make a decision about sanitation.

I might as well make a confession here.  It's probably clear enough anyway, but I should be on record about it.  At the beginning of this conversation, I was very much opposed to outsourcing sanitation.   I felt the same way you do, and for the same reasons.  But the more I studied the matter, the more I talked to people, and the more I learned and thought carefully about it, the more I have changed my thinking about outsourcing.  I think it's the right thing for the Village to do, it's better organized and more efficient than our current system, it will produce extra income that is otherwise not easy to get, and it will leave us with the same service we will have if we don't outsource.  We have more control over sanitation if we contract it out.  And it's much cheaper for each of us as homeowners than trying to accomplish exactly the same things if we don't outsource.

I have been having a philosophical debate with myself about this issue.  Is it my job to advocate for the satisfaction of my neighbors' wishes, or is it my job to do what I think is best for the Village, whether my neighbors like it or not?  And if the former, for which neighbors' wishes should I advocate?

Well, I've found a partial way out of the dilemma in the case of sanitation.  It's true the Village gets more money for less work if we outsource, but if we compensate ourselves for the money we would have gotten with outsourcing, it comes out to a kind of wash for the Village.  Except for the extra management requirement.  It makes a very big difference to each of us homeowners, who have to pay the extra money, but it can be more or less equal for the Village fiscally.  There's a way I can advocate for the wishes of people who, for whatever reasons, don't want to outsource sanitation, while protecting the Village at the same time.  Partially and more or less.

The very clear fact is that many of us don't want to outsource sanitation.  We've seen and heard it all, but some of us just like it the way it is.  It doesn't have to be rational, it's just the way some of us feel.  One of our neighbors, a friend of mine, says the numbers make clear we should outsource, but she just doesn't want to.  Got it.

So here's what I have decided to do.  I've decided that if my neighbors want to keep sanitation under Village Hall's roof, and they're willing to pay what it will cost the Village, who am I to vote to take it away from them?  If you don't want to outsource sanitation, and you're willing to pay the cost, my vote and I are yours.  All I ask is that this is really what you want, that you're really committed to paying for it, and that what you want is what most of us want.

There won't be any problem for you and me if we agree with each other to pay a higher sanitation bill.  You've already offered to do that.  The problem will come when we tell our other neighbors that we've decided to have them pay a much higher bill, too.  What will happen if I advocate for you, and we don't outsource, and sanitation fees get really high, is that someone, not you, will want a word with me.  They'll want to complain, vigorously, that I have stuck them with a bill they don't want to pay, and it was their understanding there was a way they didn't have to.  They won't come to you.  They'll come to me.

So I need you to bail me out.  I need you to explain to your neighbors, and convince them, that outsourcing is not what they/we want, and that they should be agreeable to pay much more than they've been paying and more than they might otherwise have to pay to get their refuse removed.  Now I know you won't convince everyone, but I need you to convince a lot of people.  I need to vote on behalf of a very healthy majority.

Let me present you a model of what you might do.  A year and a half ago, there was a question of moving the BP election to combine it with the general election.  It seemed to me to be a good idea, because it would be cheaper for the Village, and we would get many more people to vote.  So some of my BP neighbors and I had nice flyers printed, we paid for those flyers, we put our names and telephone numbers on those flyers, and we went door-to-door distributing them.  Every home in BP got one.  It was unquestionably money equity and sweat equity.  If someone was home, we took the time to talk to them, to explain why this seemed like such a good idea, and why they should vote to do it.  To me, moving the election was as obviously a good thing to do as not outsourcing sanitation is to you.  I and my neighbors put our money and more where our mouths were.  I guess I would have to say we succeeded in convincing people, because they voted to move the election.  It's moved.

That's what I'm asking you to do.  Go convince people.  Convince most people.  Do it for me, so I can do something for you.  Plenty of people will get mad at me for wasting their money, so produce an irresistible majority that I can feel I am legitimately representing.  Not a majority of people in a certain room at a certain time on a certain day, but a majority of all the people who write checks to pay their sanitation bills, and a majority of people who can vote.  And put yourselves out there.  Let your neighbors know who you are, and that it's you who want not to outsource.  Maybe when some of them get incensed, they will remember you, and they'll come talk to you about it.  If they come to me, I'll remind them that it was you who saw the community value in keeping sanitation the way it is.  I will advocate for you.  But remember, as there were more of you at a given meeting, urging that we don't outsource, than there were neighbors who thought we should, there are vastly more BP residents who don't bother to come to these meetings at all.  They don't even bother to vote.  They seem very uninvolved.  Do you want to guess what they think about things like our PW department and the sanitation bill?  Couldn't care less; just want lower bills and the garbage picked up?  That's my guess, too.  I will hear from them when their bill suddenly increases substantially.  Those neighbors are your challenge.

I don't want to pay an inflated price for something that can be inexpensive.  But I'm just one person, and I'll do it, if that's what you want.  I'll be OK with it.  I won't be OK with fighting your battles for you, though.  Especially if I think you were wrong to pick them.