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had been paying individually. The City of Bloomington has a program to help their neighborhoods organize collection on their own. In Falcon Heights, the residents of . Hollywood Court negotiated as a group, with the common goal of having fewer trucks on their fragile alleys. University Grove has had grass-roots organized collection for years. Another way for the consumers to get back the savings from increased efficiency is through a city contract. "Municipal governments are in a position, by virtue of the way they proeure rubbish hauling services for their citizens, to dictate whether consumers or haulers will get the most benefit of customer density efficiencies." (9) Other Research . The 1993 report on organized collection from the state Attorney General's Office, Antitrust Division, has been quoted elsewhere as finding considerable price advantantage for consumers in a "competitive" system. However, the report does not equate "competitive" with "open," but includes competitively-bid city-wide systems in the "competitive" class. The "non-competitive" systems against whieh the report recommends are those in which a hauler has an exclusive contract that has been awarded or extended without competition. (3) . GBB Solid Waste Management Consultants conducted studies of metropolitan area rates in 1993 and 1994. They found that the average rates under organized systems was 13% lower than than for open systems for 30 gallon containers, about 9% lower for 60 gallon containers, over 16% lower for 90 gallon containers and 16.6% lower over all. (4) The GBB study also broke out averages by county. In Ramsey County, customers in open systems paid an average $13.30 per month for a 3D-gallon container, while customers in organized systems paid an average of $11.78. The differences are even greater for larger containers. See the Chart in Appendix D. (5) ^... j . Appendix 14 of the RmnseylWashington report also summarized findings from Oakdale, North St. Paul, Maplewood and Lauderdale, which had conducted fee comparisons in their own organized collection studies. In every case, monthly rates were lower for cities with organized collection than for cities with open systems. (6) Special Deals It has been pointed out that haulers have been offering as much as six months of free service to new customers. "How can an organized city system compete with that?" the Commission has been asked. Residents who have accepted these offers would do well to study the fine print in their contracts, especially if they think they will be able to switch to another hauler as soon as their free service period comes to an end. They are likely to find that they have committed to a minimum contract period of several years, with major penalties for eancellation. Businesses cannot offer these discounts without recovering their costs Ie City of Falcon Heights Final Report on Organized Collection October 13, 2004 10