So simple a thing as collecting municipal opala gets complicated, as the County Council Budget and Finance Committee learned this week, The Maui News reported.

Lanai was the first part of Maui where automated trash pickup was used.

"It has worked well," says Council Chairman Riki Hokama, who holds the Lanai residency seat.

Since then, automated pickup has been extended to parts of Central and South Maui. The county would like to use it even more extensively.

Customers are given a 96-gallon trash container on rollers (though they must pay $100 if it is lost or damaged). Trucks with a remote-control arm can handle the containers with a single driver, in contrast to the three-person crews needed to pick up bags and empty trash cans by hand.

But not all automated routes are the same. In Central Maui, routes are visited twice a week. On Lanai, just once.

It seemed unfair, somehow, that both places were paying $72 every six months ($12 a month).

So in the revision of rates in the current budget, it was decided to cut Lanai's rate to $6 a month.

However, in places Upcountry with nonautomated routes, pickup is also just once a week.

Council Member Mike Molina asked how does the county justify that.

"I know I'm going to get calls" from Upcountry trash customers, he predicted.

The reason is that while Upcountry stops get service half as often, they get to leave twice as much opala for the collectors – six 32-gallon cans or bags a week.

Rates were left at $12 for the rest of the county.

Council Member Michelle Anderson was unhappy with the twice-a-week schedule in Central Maui – which presumably should cost $24 a month, since customers there get to leave out twice as much trash as Lanai and get it picked up twice as often as Makawao.

However, that wasn't Anderson's gripe. She said since smaller households cannot easily generate 192 gallons of genuine garbage a week, they tend to use the second collection to get rid of yard waste.

Council Member Bill Medeiros had a different take. He represents the East Maui residency district. Hana doesn't have collection by the Department of Environmental Management. Instead, the Public Works Highways Division takes time out each week to collect opala. That, he said, takes away from working on the roads.

The same work-force policy applies on Lanai, where road crews are part-time solid waste crews.

"This is not an easy, one-size-fits-all system," Hokama said.

While he is pleased with automatic collection where he lives, he still wonders how efficient it will be in hilly areas or where there are long driveways.

Besides, he said, in the original agreement with Lanaians, they were to get twice-a-week pickup.

"That was the agreement we made them sign," he said. But the county never lived up to its part.

"We need to be fair with the residents."

The rest of the committee members had no objection to lowering the fee for Lanai, but they did want to know when the hands-on areas of the county would get automated.

They reminded Cheryl Okuma, the new director of the new Department of Environmental Management, that expansion of automation has been on the table for years.

Okuma said she could not give definite information, and that to try might be "premature."

Her department is working on a county Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, and it would be better to wait for that.

Asked when they could see that, Okuma said sometime next year. It isn't finished, and when it is it will have to be presented at a public hearing.