Gladstone tried to "city-fy" the trash pickup about 5 years ago. Whoo, you've never seen so many senior citizens (and others, like us) up in arms about taking away their ability to choose their trash company. The city people said that there were too many trucks on our roads and they could get a good price by negotiating for the whole city (of something like 40,000). The residents said screw you, take care of our roads and stop griping, and we think competition will take care of the prices. The city people came back with a deal from some company waaaay down south (so the "green" factor didn't really play out) and the price was more than most residents were already paying. Ultimately the residents won after some very contentious meetings (one of which Terry Kimball Crooks attended). Now we have a choice of about 5 different services and our prices are rock bottom, and the service from the companies is top notch because they know a simple phone call is all it takes to switch. I like where we ended up.