Trash: The (Momentary) Finale

Today, the WUTC down in Olympia posted its decision on the  trash and recycling applications for Point Roberts.  The Commission appears to be composed of three Commissioners, two of whom supported Mr. Gellatly's application, and one of whom supported neither application.  That means that Gellatly has the contract, but the decision comes with qualification.  And that is that Freedom 2000 must have the system up and running in 45 days.

The general view of the decision, which can be seen here and runs to 53 pages, is that this is a mess and that Wilkowski's operation has been in 'flagrant' violation of a number of laws governing this work, and that Gellatly has been somewhat slack himself in regards to state laws about trucking/registrations.  However, it appeared to them that Gellatly has shown a willingness to become a law abider, whereas Wilkowski had, if anything, shown a deeper propensity  for the other direction.  The most flagrant of the Wilkowski violations appear to be his willingness to provide on-call services after he gave up his G certificate.  Such actions represented knowing and intentional disregard of the laws under which he was permitted to operate in the Washington State trash collection world, although the actions might have been of considerable benefit to some Point Roberts' residents.

I would guess that that particular offense wouldn't have weighed too heavily with many of Pt. Roberts' residents, but the WUTC must of necessity look at things in a different light, be attentive to the letter of the law.

There are three paragraphs in the main opinion that I found particularly interesting.  Paragraphs 69 and 70 both address the County's role in this general fiasco; paragraph 71 speaks to the considerable animosity that has been generated in Point Roberts itself, anger sufficient to split the social fabric.  The WUTC commissioners think that Mr. Gellatly's first job will be to heal those wounds.  Lucky Mr. Gellatly!  I will be looking forward to his State of Point Roberts Trash speech soon.

In the dissenting opinion, the third commissioner doubts any of this is going to work because of the County's failure in the first place to address Pt. Roberts' uniqueness, or its failure to get some other already-established trash collection business to take on the problem of being us. Actually, Mr. Wilkowski pretty much supported this position himself in testimony before the Commission where he apparently argued that the WUTC should approve neither his application nor Gellatly's, which action would force the County to do something.  This position was countered in the majority opinion on the grounds that the WUTC can't make the County do anything, although they acknowledged that it was doubtful that anybody could create an economically viable business plan for Pt. Roberts trash collection under the current circumstances. 

And so we go on.  Check back in about 45 days.