>For years, the Village of Ridgewood was offering “free” garbage service to local schools. After getting caught and held accountable, it then solicited bids to collect schools’ garbage and found the town (public sector) losing bid was 2 times more expensive than a private contractor’s winning bid. (town bid $130K vs private bid of $62K)
The town’s operations manager unwittingly explains why his garbage hauling bid lost so badly to the private sector: “I can’t say that we can compete with private industry. We have to account for the equipment, and they can spread it over a whole lot bigger territory.”
No, duh – it’s called efficiency and economies of scale (and in his case, waste, featherbedding and inefficiency). Of course, to fully realize this cost saving, the town gov’t needs to sell equipment and reduce hours (or compensation) for its operations employees, who presumably have less work to do. Let’s hope they do — and pass along that savings on to taxpayers.
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