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Health & Fitness

City Council Candidate Steve Galvin's Idea To Reduce Garbage Service Very Unpopular, Poll Says

Steve Galvin believes once-a-week trash pickup in the heat of Florida is just enough. 

St. Petersburg voters, however, think that idea is garbage, according to a new survey from St. Pete Polls commissioned by SaintPetersBlog.

Galvin, who is running for District 8 seat on the St. Petersburg City Council D, said the twice-weekly trash pickup service by the city is “redundant.”  The District 8 candidate was airing his opinions on garbage collection at a St. Petersburg Democratic Club open forum, along with fellow District 8 candidates Robert Davis, Alex Duensing and Amy Foster.

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“I’ve lived in number of places in the country,’ Gavin said, “and this is the only place where they pick up your trash twice a week.”

Turns out, St. Pete voters like their trash picked up twice a week and don't want to see service reduced.

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According to the poll commissioned by this blog, 74% of likely voters in the upcoming city elections said they do not support reducing residential garbage collection from two days a week to one. Just 17% of respondents say they support the idea, while 9% are undecided.

Whether Galvin's radical idea for reducing garbage collection hurts him at the polls remains to be seen.

As an alternative to twice a week garbage collection, Gavin suggests reducing  pick-up to once weekly, and the other day devoted to city-managed recycling.

“Have the city get involved in curbside recycling,” he said to scattered applause, “instead of outsourcing it to some other company. That’s just sort of a no-brainer.”

Regarding the poll's methodology: The poll was conducted by an automated phone call polling system. The results were then weighted to account for proportional differences between the respondents' demographics and the demographics of the registered voter population in St. Petersburg. The demographics used were: party, race and age. 

The voters polled were chosen at random within the registered voter population inside of the city of St. Petersburg. Only voters that answered that they were planning on voting in the August 27th primary election were asked the questions included in this survey.

The scientific results shown in the summary below have a sample size of 441 respondents and a margin of error of 4.7% at a 95% confidence level.

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