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haulers are owners/operators and don't hire a lot of extra people, so it's really a good deal for them. What can the haulers do at this particular time? First, it is my judgment that they are not a cohesive group. There are 50 of them that are licensed, but there's only a half a dozen or so that seem to get involved. I have knowledge that they called an emergency general meeting last Wednesday night to talk about this matter, but I was told that only three haulers showed up. They have never had their act together in the past and I doubt that it will happen in the near future. When I met with the members of the Executive Board prior to your announcement, and that was Frank Rauschnot, Vice President, George Oxford, Helen Crouse and Mike Heinz, Director, there was no question that they had adequate hauling capacity in the private sector to cover our customers. They also were very emphatic in stating that 90 to 95% of the licensed haulers offered a collection rate of $12 to $15 per quarter for senior citizens which is about the same as what our subsidized existing rate is without an increase. They also were emphatic in saying that the regular rate would range from $18 to $21 per quarter. Approximately one-half or 6-7,000 customers called private haulers and made arrangements for private service after May 9th. When the lawsuit was filed and the confusing coverage followed in the papers, think many city customers were beginning to wonder if this actually was going to happen so I think many are waiting for a positive statement. I suppose the private haulers could organize and refuse the city customers. I doubt that will happen because they are not that well organized; I rather think it would be a cutthroat, dog eat dog situation among the private haulers. If they attempted to do something like that, we won't sell the trucks until May 10th and we could hold them over on an emergency basis. I understand that some of the Council members have talked to Frank Rauschnot and some of the private haulers to come into the Committee meeting next Tuesday and make some statements favorable to the city staying in the collection business. I think that's going to happen and I have heard some rumors that the private haulers will have their attorney, Bob Johnson, the former State Representative and candidate for Governor, as their spokesman at the Tuesday meeting. This is only hearsay but I think it's likely that will happen and I think he will be asking for the city to stay in and then some kind of an endorsement of the Showalter plan of a year ago calling for a long-term negotiated contract. As I have said, things have changed in the past year and I no longer favor that approach but to this point I have not stated that formally to any of the private haulers or to any of the Council members. What I hoped would happen in our going out of the business is that the private haulers would organize themselves by planning districts so that perhaps 3 or 4 private haulers would be working each of the planning districts. I had offered to give our engineering and technical services to assist the private haulers in an informal way working with the District Planning Councils to program the collection. It was my intention that we would work with that kind of system for two or three months after May 9th and how well that worked would determine the plan that we would propose by August 1 st for mandatory collection. I thought there was a chance the city could stay put of this from the standpoint of the billing, the disbursal of the funds, etc., and let the private haulers run it on a strictly free enterprise basis. I think it could have gone that way except for what happened with the three Council members and the unions which triggered adverse publicity and adverse motives, etc. which have made the haulers very suspicious and gun shy. At this particular time if I was going to give you a plan to follow, it would be something along this line: require weekly collection from each dwelling unit 1 to 4; unlimited pick up, competitive bids taken in each of the Planning Districts, probably a one-