After Police, Shops and Banks, Savisaar Proposes Municipal Landfill
Private companies should not be profiting from Tallinn residents, said Mayor Edgar Savisaar, who has set up a municipal police force, municipal markets and stores, approved the creation of a municipal bank and now has proposed to buy back the Tallinn Landfill.
In an opinion piece today in Pealinn, the city's municipal paper, Savisaar said the trash and recycling costs are "burning holes in the pockets" of Tallinn citizens. He said the Tallinn Landfill, which services 500,000 people in the capital and surrounding areas, is a symbol of the EU, having received huge investments and turned into a megaproject, and has forgotten about the common man.
He said the landfill is too large and expensive to maintain, and a solution would be for the city to buy 65 percent of the company, currently owning 35 percent. The move, according to Savisaar, would increase quality and drive down prices, and the service could one day become completely free of charge.
The 67-hectare landfill was set up in 1998, and cost tens of millions of euros in investments.
The mayor's penchant for nationalization and parallel infrastructure duplicating national structures is fairly well-known and has been satirized. He was also closely connected to a parallel home guard organization in the 1990s.