A proposed trash fee hike in Cape Girardeau has resurrected a push to seek proposals from private contractors interested in bidding on the city's solid waste service.

Councilman Doug Richards Monday failed to garner enough council support to seek trash service proposals from private companies.

The 3-3 deadlock on Richards' motion prompted the councilman to ask why council members were averse to finding out what kind of deal a private hauler might offer the city.

But Richards didn't get an answer Monday. His was a question that's been addressed more than once in the past five years -- when trash fees were increased in 1989 and 1991.

Councilmen Al Spradling III, Mary Wulfers and Melvin Kasten voted against Richards' motion.

"I think solid waste is an essential city service that should be controlled by the city," said Spradling Tuesday. "To talk about seeking proposals from private companies gets into a policy decision that the council has decided several times in the past."

Spradling said the problems with privately controlled trash service -- particularly a private monopoly -- are "multi-faceted."

He said a large private company -- Browning Ferris Industries repeatedly has sought a bid on the city's residential trash service -- could afford to underrate costs to secure the initial contract, Spradling said.

"Once they got the contract, and the city sold its trucks and other equipment, there would be little incentive for BFI to keep down costs" he added.

Spradling said that in the face of continually changing federal solid waste regulations, the city would be unable to secure a long-term contract without "escape clauses" to account for potential new mandates.

"Once that contract expires, we would be at the mercy of the haulers," he said. "But at that point, the city would be unable to get back in the trash business without a huge capital investment."

Spradling said the second problem is that a private hauler likely would leave bill collection and other administrative responsibilities up to the city.

"We were told last night by BFI that if you don't pay your trash bill, they don't pick up your trash," he said. "That means it's still the city's problem. Why should we have the administrative hassles without the business itself?"

Spradling said that if several trash haulers were able to compete for residential customers some residents likely would save the costs and refuse to have their trash collected.

"You'd have trash piling up or being dumped in parks and ditches around the city because people don't want to pay the fee," he said.

Kasten said that's the problem the city had when private haulers handled the city's trash previously.

Wulfers said that even if trash service is bid out, the city still would be responsible for closure and monitoring of its landfill, operation of the transfer station, and enforcement of trash collection.

"Even if somebody else comes in, the city's not out of the trash business," she said. "There are certain utilities that communities can run efficiently, and I believe solid waste is one of them."

When Wulfers was elected to the council in 1990, she favored bidding out trash service. But she said she envisioned many vendors competing for Cape Girardeau customers.

"I realize now that that probably isn't going to happen in Cape," she said. "With trash collection, economy of scale really comes into play.

"A large corporation like BFI can do the job cheaper than a small, local trash hauler. So it's a question of who's going to have it, the city or a single private company."

Wulfers said it's particularly important for the city to maintain control over solid waste with the many federal regulations that continue to be imposed on municipal waste collection and disposal.

"In some ways it amazes me that all the repercussions from this end with the city," she said. "If we didn't have all these regulations and mandates, the fees would be going down, not up."