SPSA hired a familiar face Tuesday to take over the financially troubled waste agency that serves hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in South Hampton Roads.
He is Rowland "Bucky" Taylor, the city manager of Franklin, who has been closely involved with the Southeastern Public Service Authority for more than 20 years.
Affable, soft-spoken and seasoned in local government, Taylor was offered the $140,000-a-year job after a closed-door meeting Tuesday in Chesapeake that culminated a months-long national recruiting search.
After informing Franklin's political leaders of the opportunity that afternoon, he accepted the position of executive director, effective Aug. 1.
Taylor, 58, will replace John Hadfield, who is retiring after a decade as SPSA's director. Hadfield, an engineer by training, has described the past two years of controversy, employee buyouts, cutbacks, lawsuits and media scrutiny as "the abyss."
Hadfield said he was happy with Taylor's selection, which came over more than 20 other candidates and after two rounds of interviews.
From his office Tuesday, Taylor said he has no plans to bring in a new management team or shake up the regional agency, which handles most trash and recycling in eight cities and counties, including his hometown, Franklin.
SPSA is set to expire in 2018. But Taylor said he wants to consider all options for continuing the agency "in one form or another" after the deadline. Finding a site for a new public landfill and financing its construction is "certainly one issue" to consider toward that goal, he said.
"Right now, I plan to look, listen, talk and learn," Taylor said.
There had been much speculation that SPSA might hire someone from outside the region or outside local government, a reformer who would restructure the agency that is now about $240 million in debt and charging disposal fees of more than $100 per ton of garbage.
Instead, SPSA stayed close to home, selecting someone with long experience on the agency's board and with its internal decision-makers.
The move drew applause from many government officials, who view Taylor as a well-grounded veteran and professional administrator.
"It's a fresh start, an opportunity to set the tone and find common ground on a host of issues," said Chesapeake Councilman Bryan Collins, who sits on SPSA's board.
Some in the private waste business, however, were disappointed.
"Sounds like the status quo to me," said John C. Holland, who runs a private landfill in Suffolk and has feuded with SPSA for years.
Taylor will have a busy agenda.
The agency is mulling a bid to buy its trash-burning power plant in Portsmouth, which converts about half of the region's garbage to steam and electricity.
There are questions about whether SPSA should continue to import out-of-state waste; about its curbside recycling and composting programs; and about how best to resolve the "flow control" debate with private companies.
Drawing on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, SPSA and most of its member communities have adopted "flow control" that requires private haulers to bring their waste to local disposal facilities and pay a prescribed fee. But Suffolk and Virginia Beach have yet to vote on the matter, due to take effect next February.
Taylor must also settle an agency that has seen employee morale tumble and several top executives leave. And he must restore trust among many environmental and citizen groups, which have viewed recent controversies over excessive spending on trips, gifts and meals as hypocritical at a time of service cutbacks and ever-higher rates.
For his part, Taylor is unfazed.
"Those things just breed opportunity," he said. "I'm the kind of person who thinks something good usually comes from difficulty."
Scott Harper, (757) 446-22340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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Sorry, I meant the power
Sorry, I meant the power plant.
True Enough
You are correct that the purchase of the waste to enery plant was by choice, but it did not cost SPSA anything either. We had borrowed to construct it, and we are required by the contract to repair and maintain it, so the "purchase" really did not have significant financial implications. My challenge to Greenmun is to stop and think before he posts again after reading another article in which Scott Harper simply regurgitates another article with the same anti SPSA slant in the first few paragraphs. I wonder why whenever he writes an article about an area city he does not remind everyone in the first paragraph that the city has debt. Of course they have debt; they borrow long term to build capital assets, just like SPSA. Should they pay cash so today's taxpayers pay the whole cost for future users? Of course not, so why should SPSA?
Inheriting problems is never easy.
I certainly wish Mr. Taylor well as the new Executive Director. Mr. Barrett asks how so many things could have been done without borrowing money, but fails to acknowledge that some of those things should not have been done at all. When the SPSA waste management system was built, waste-to-energy was mandated for political reasons, but the purchase of the Navy's power plant was by SPSA's choice, and ill advised under the Navy's terms. Hopefully Mr. Taylor's long experience with SPSA will help him in revisiting some of the reasons why there is such a significant debt, and he can exert some pressure on the Navy to live up to their moral obligation to the region, and on Virginia Beach to meet their legal obligations to the Authority.
LOL
The Soap Opera continues.
A good day for Franklin !!
This seems like a win-win, for Mr. Taylor and especially for the city of Franklin. Don't think it was a win for SPSA, though.
Incorrect Assessment
The previous gentleman's (the initial comment)assessment is well off base and is fairly ignorant; in the kindest sense of the word of course. What is needed is what has occurred. As SPSA's currently forseeable longevity, or lack thereof, hangs in the balance, what is needed is a seasoned, respected, relatively-high positioned local government official to attempt to mend any broken business relationships and develop new ones with existing southeastern Virginia local governments to breath new life into the regional refuse service. Bringing in an 'outsider' would have effectively wasted what time is not available when a decade is so brief in terms of what it takes to accomplish the most solid and significant of programs on the local government, let alone, regional levels. What was even wiser about the hiring decision was that the person heralded from a relatively non-controversia
Well, perhaps Greenmun will
Well, perhaps Greenmun will tell us how he would have financed a refuse derived fuel plant, a waste to energy plant to create steam and electricity for sale to the Navy and Dominion Power, respectively, a series of transfer stations, and a fleet of trucks and trailers to pick up the municipal waste at transfer stations and deliver it to the RDF plant. Perhaps he would have found some other way such as paying cash or perhaps he would have simply had the members pay the cost and then carry the debt service. Fact is, Scott Harper and Reid Greenmun have the two step down quite nicely. That is, Scott once again includes in every article the fact that SPSA has debt, and Reid once again repeats this fact. Of course, having been challenged over and over again to tell us how he would have created these asset without incurring debt, we are left with only one conclusion; that is, Greenmun has not a clue. What else
BUCKY WANT A RAISE???????
HeyBucky, You want to know how to get a big raise working for us , the taxpayers? Just do a horrible job, and the directors will pay you more. Thats what happened with the last director. Oh, I will be watching you......when you go to appoint EX Portsmouth City Councilman and SPSA board member Ray Smith Sr. to a full time high paying position with SPSA. I do actually wish you good luck. With Portsmouth being a host city to SPSA we pay more than any other non host city around for our trash disposal.
Wow, talk about missing an opportunity!
No offense to Bucky (I don't know him personally) - but let's get real, SPSA is suffering from bad leadership and massive debt. What an intelligent course of action would have been would be to hire someone from the far outside of the SPSA leadership and bringing with them the special skills for turning around troubled organizations and cleaning house.