Outsourcing street-sweeping proposal nixed

Burbank residents and city workers spoke out at a City Council meeting on Tuesday against a staff proposal to outsource a single commercial-area street-sweeping route.

They expressed concerns that the proposal to seek competitive bids on a street-sweeping contract would result in the loss of city jobs and lead to a broader practice of outsourcing city services that would diminish the quality of those services.

“We have quality services in this city — people value the service and the courtesy that they receive from our city employees,” said Jeffrey Moulton, a journeyman in the Public Works Department.

In a unanimous vote, the council ultimately rejected the proposal, which would have allowed staff to solicit bids as part of an effort to determine whether contracting the route offered substantial savings over the current operations using city-owned equipment operated by city employees.

City Manager Mark Scott said that had the proposal been adopted, it would not have cost any street-sweeper operators their jobs, but he said he was not surprised that the council chose not to support outsourcing.

Public works officials began to consider contracting the route following the retirement of a street-sweeper operator and the planned decommissioning of a street-sweeping machine, said Bonnie Teaford, the city’s public works director.

Based on cost data from other Southern California cities that outsource street-sweeping operations, she estimated outsourcing might save about $350,000 in upfront costs to replace the aging street-sweeping machine and roughly $77,000 annually in operating costs.

“’May’ — a key word,” said Jaime M. Torres Sr., president of the Burbank City Employees Assn., regarding the projected savings noted in a staff report.

Torres also quoted a thank-you note he said he received from Teaford earlier this year in which she called public works employees “unsung heroes” and “the heart of our community.”

Sergio Carrillo said he came to work for the city 23 years ago from the aerospace industry on the advice of his father-in-law, a fire department employee, who said a city job offered a “bright future for a young family.”

Beginning as a janitor, he eventually worked his way to street-sweeper operator, his “dream,” and a job he described as the “eyes and ears” of the community.

Carrillo, who feared a street-sweeping contract would force him out of his job, described many occasions when he had alerted police or city staff to emergency situations and other problems in the early, pre-dawn mornings when he was sweeping.

When it came time to discuss the proposal, several council members noted that street-sweeper positions offer important middle-class jobs for workers making their way up the city’s employment ladder as Carrillo had done.

“There’s one thing that we can’t put a price on in this,” said Councilwoman Emily Gabel-Luddy, noting that the city could save $6,500 a month under the proposal. “One of the things you can’t put a price on is the opportunity for employees” to start without a specialized education and work up to a high-skilled position.

Mayor David Gordon said he understood that staff might see a cost savings in the proposal, but he saw value in keeping as many city services “in-house” as possible.

“There’s a quality, in the old days they called it ‘esprit de corps,’” Gordon said of the city employees’ dedication to their work. “There’s a quality and value to that, as has been stated, that’s hard to put into dollars and cents.”