Popular Recycling Center to be Recycled

A community "input" meeting hosted by city officials can be a Jekyll-and-Hyde creature -- sweet lamb one minute, Billy Goat Gruff the next.

That's probably one reason why El Cerrito had a professional facilitator on hand last Thursday night to lead the community input meeting on how to recreate the city's recycling center.

The heavily used and aging recycling center, established in 1972, is going to be rebuilt on its existing 1.93-acre site at the eastern end of Schmidt Lane. So popular has the facility become, the city is thinking about expanding not only the materials that can be recycled but also those that can be reused, like books.

In a series of three public meetings, the city is asking citizens how to do it. The second gathering drew 18 community members to City Hall Thursday night.

Facilitator Ariel Ambruster began with a gentle request for respect and civility, and audience members appeared to respond with expressions of genial and benevolent courtesy. But when discussion turned to the recycling center's Book Exchange, the emotional temperature began to climb.

"It's like a shark feeding-frenzy comes in," resident Jenny Hammer said. "It's pretty wild."

"There have been conflicts," Fulvia Hayes said from the audience. "There was woman who's a book dealer in San Mateo. She carted off about six boxes of books."

"This is something that irks me," Hayes added.

Another member of the audience, who declined to give her name to Patch, said, "I know at least three of the guys living out of their cars and selling them (the books). These guys stand over when people bring in boxes and they elbow others out of the way."

The Book Exchange, where anyone can drop off books and anyone can take them away, drew attention not only because of the evident distress over aggressive book hawks seeking books they can resell but also because the popularity of the books has helped prompt ideas for the recycling center to accept other materials like school supplies for reuse.

"The level of support that the overall community has for the books is overwhelming," said city Environmental Analyst Garth Schultz, who manages the recylcing center. "We have great Yelp ratings, and they're all raving about the books."

To be sure, many people still come to the Book Exchange as bibliophiles not resellers, as journalist Elaine Herscher discovered in her attached Patch video on the Book Exchange.

And it's that kind of connection to the books that feeds the frustration that surfaced at the Thursday meeting.

"I used to go the recycling center all the time because of the books," said Marianne Hegeman, who founded El Cerrito's citywide garage sale 20 years ago. "Now I don't go there. I don't go there because of the dealers -- they take everything."

Resident Bob Zoller said, "There are people there who are clearing $100,000 just by doing that." He added that he knows of one man, whom he declined to name, who keeps a warehouse for the purpose.

No one spoke up for the dealers, though Schultz noted that some of those who take books to make a profit argue that they are putting books back into circulation that otherwise might be destroyed.

The city is considering several measures that could reduce such conflicts over the books and other materials at the rebuilt recycling center. One proposal would set limited hours when resellers could take books and require them to obtain a permit, though no clear answer emerged at Thursday's meeting for effective enforcement of such measures.

"It's been great to hear what the community says," said city Environmental Services Manager Melanie Mintz, whose department oversees the recycling center. She said the city is receiving suggestions also from residents by email and from a technical advisory committee for the rebuild project.

The city invited "design-build" proposals and hopes to have the plan ready for council approval at the end of November, Mintz said. A tentative schedule calls for the recycling center to be shut down for approximately 14 months beginning in January while the new center is built.

Operating in the interim would be a scaled-down facility, which Mintz dubbed "seven bins, five spaces (for vehicles) and a guard shack."

The third community input meeting for the new recycling center will held at 5 p.m., Sept. 14, at City Hall.