Trash Rate Hike Ploy

On November 20th,  the Redlands City Council will hold a public hearing to discuss the trash rate hike for the repair of Redlands streets.   TKE was the engineering firm contracted to make the determination that the Redlands city trash trucks have damaged our streets.  The city staff is reasoning that because of this report the citizens should pay more for trash service unless they can muster the unlikely number of 11,000 + parcel owners to write protest letters.  

Once again it seems that citizens have been bamboozled by our out of town staff members that  appear to be playing politics for our elected officials.

 Isn't this just a game to force  citizens to pay for years of  mismanagement and lack of proper maintenance of our city's streets?  The city staff try to not dirty their hands and hired yet another  "contractor" to write the report blaming city trash trucks for road deterioration.  Why couldn't Redlands engineering staff do the work?  If the city trash trucks did the most damage to city streets then the roads in front of the dump and city yards should be in the worse shape.  Is this true?

TKE was contracted with the city in 2007 and has made over a half of million dollars from the City of Redlands.  Does TKE just produce determinations as guided by city staff to keep the gravy train flowing?  Was the study really a comprehensive study? How did TKE win bids for all of these jobs? How does TKE keep a contract for five years?   Was the work competitively bid to allow other engineering firms to compete?  Or is this contract just an example of how the city is really doing business cutting out local small businesses from having a chance to fairly and competitively bid on local contracts? The consulting contract and spreadsheet of funds paid to TKE are included below.  

What happen to state gas tax money that the city receives for road maintenance and repair?  How many times do citizens have to pay for street repairs?  Many other trucks and heavy vehicles drive our city streets everyday so why aren't they being taxed for road repairs?  

The proposed trash rate hike seems like another ruse sponsored by the city of Redlands.