Tag Archives: franchise

Exclusive Franchise for Solid Waste Collection Services @ LCC 2012-12-11

Why did the Lowndes County Commission make this exclusive franchise with a Florida or Alabama or New York company and then sue a local Lowndes County company after the VDT reported the previous spring that any contract would be non-exclusive and wouldn’t put anybody out of business?

Here, obtained by LAKE through an open records request, is the contract with ADS of Middle Georgia, LLC. The the agenda item for the 11 December 2012 Commission meeting at which this contract was approved says ADS of Central Alabama, Inc. The contract says ADS is “a Florida corporation”, and we know ADS is owned by Highstar Capital of New York City. Once again, why is granting a cheap monopoly to an out-of-state company more important than either letting local companies compete for the service or having the county continue to provide a public service directly to its taxpayers and citizens?

The termination clause I pointed out to the Commission after an ADS executive made excuses for nonperformance is Paragraph 18 of the contract:

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Internet access lunacy maybe partly corrected by Google Fiber

Slower and more expensive than the rest of the world: U.S. Internet access doesn’t have to be that way. Bob knows about our Internet issues here and is interested in helping.

Chunka Mul wrote for Forbes 26 April 2013, The Lunacy of Our Internet Access, and How Google Fiber Could Provide Needed Shock Therapy,

Imagine you are the world’s largest operator of shopping malls, and shoppers can only get to your malls via the equivalent of dirt paths and country roads. What’s more, those meager routes are all controlled by an oligopoly of private, toll-road operators that focus on their profitability, not on getting consumers to the stores in your malls.

The result would be a mess. The roads would be slow yet expensive. Consumers would limit shopping trips. The stores in your malls would have a hard time generating business, so your malls would languish.

Yet the entire online economy runs on an analogous network. The network could easily be lightning fast, pervasive and cheap (or even free). Instead,

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Local businesses help the local economy

Here’s a long list of studies that show that:
Independent businesses have been found to generate between 60% and 300% more local economic activity that chain retail stores do.
Somebody remind me why VLCIA’s main efforts are on bringing in big chains?

Or why people are so fascinated with Olive Garden, for that matter?

Well, I suppose if you want lower wages, big box retailers are good for that.

Hm, so the ultimate big box would be a private prison: a literally captive audience paid for by captive tax dollars and hirable at the lowest possible wages.

-jsq