Stupid
From the Herald-Sun:
That'll fly. What would be the difference between a mandatory 50 or 60 dollar a year fee, and a tax increase? I guess i'm too stupid to figure that one out.
Give me a break, here. Pick up the damn yard waste, and finance it out of property taxes. Right now about 25% of Durham's households pony up the 60 bucks a year. A concerted effort to get people to stop participating in that program, and start dumping their yard waste into the street should be able to cut that number down to 10% or less.
I've been a participant in the pay for yard waste pickup program since it started in 2003 or whenever. (I'll take a picture of all the stickers on my cart when i get home from work.) This is the last year i'm doing it.
It's time our Council started treating Durham like a real city, and not a credit union for their favorite projects. First, take care of the basic necessities. Pick up the damn trash. Make sure the water and sewer systems are working. Same for the traffic lights. Same for the bathrooms in our city parks.
As much as i want to see one in town, you can't start building baseball museums until all the broken stuff is fixed.
UPDATE: Michael makes the suggestion in comments that the yard waste program be made biweekly and the white goods pickup program (old appliances, etc.) be made monthly. These are excellent suggestions. I'm waiting to hear if they generate enough cost savings to be be considered.
City Council members signaled Wednesday that plans for a move to tax-paid yard-waste service are on the chopping block as they look for ways to trim a requested 11 percent increase in Durham's property tax rate.
Two members, Diane Catotti and Eugene Brown, told colleagues they should cut some or all of the $3.2 million City Manager Patrick Baker has requested to implement the program in fiscal 2008-09.
"It's too expensive, frankly, given all our other needs," said Catotti. "There are other options."
Brown agreed.
"Come back with some compromise or hybrid system," he told Baker as the council finished reviewing the manager's request for the Solid Waste Management Department. "If we're serious about cutting the proposed budget, this is the arena in which to do it."
. . .
They could even go the other way entirely, and instead of doing away with the present $60 annual collection fee, make it mandatory and force about 50,000 Durham households into the program, Page and Long said.
That'll fly. What would be the difference between a mandatory 50 or 60 dollar a year fee, and a tax increase? I guess i'm too stupid to figure that one out.
Give me a break, here. Pick up the damn yard waste, and finance it out of property taxes. Right now about 25% of Durham's households pony up the 60 bucks a year. A concerted effort to get people to stop participating in that program, and start dumping their yard waste into the street should be able to cut that number down to 10% or less.
I've been a participant in the pay for yard waste pickup program since it started in 2003 or whenever. (I'll take a picture of all the stickers on my cart when i get home from work.) This is the last year i'm doing it.
It's time our Council started treating Durham like a real city, and not a credit union for their favorite projects. First, take care of the basic necessities. Pick up the damn trash. Make sure the water and sewer systems are working. Same for the traffic lights. Same for the bathrooms in our city parks.
As much as i want to see one in town, you can't start building baseball museums until all the broken stuff is fixed.
UPDATE: Michael makes the suggestion in comments that the yard waste program be made biweekly and the white goods pickup program (old appliances, etc.) be made monthly. These are excellent suggestions. I'm waiting to hear if they generate enough cost savings to be be considered.
Labels: Durham, local government
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15 Comments:
Well, one difference between the yard waste fee and an increase in property taxes is that the property tax increase is deductible on your income tax.
I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed in Catotti and Brown on this one. They usually have more sense in matters like this.
By
Unknown, at 12:25 PM
I should try to temper those comments just a bit -- there may be a budget saving way to go about this. Would it be okay if yard waste were a biweekly service, rather than weekly? The article also pointed out that old appliance service is now weekly, and it could be made monthly instead.
There may in fact be room for some creative trimming here.
By
Unknown, at 12:29 PM
Those are very good suggestions, Michael. I will include them in my emails to Council on this topic.
By
Barry, at 12:35 PM
I am among the majority of Durhamites that do not pay for the current optional yard-waste service. This is not because I am cheap and irresponsible, but the contrary, I compost yard-waste as well as a fair amount of household waste (vegetable matter) in my back yard. This practice is environmentally responsible, provides for a beautiful and productive garden, and does not cost the city or it's citizens one cent.
I do not believe for one second that mandatory yard-waste service, whether paid through fees or taxes, will actually save money and solve the illegal dumping problems.
By
BullCityGopher, at 12:36 PM
I also compost all of my kitchen waste, most of my leaves, and use what few lawn clippings i generate as garden mulch. The only thing i use the the yard waste program for is when i trim my tree branches, and for picking up my excess leaves in December.
But really, if you think that the other 75-80% of Durham's citizens who don't participate in the yard waste program are doing the same thing, you're dreaming. We are a distinct minority in this town. Other towns around the country have figured out ways to pick up everyone's yard waste, and to also manage to pick up all the leaves that fall into the street on their own, let alone the ones that people dump there each fall.
It's not that hard.
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Barry, at 12:40 PM
I have no illusions that the other 75-80% are or will ever recycle their yard waste, and I am not against the concept of the city providing these services on a broad scale. But I don't like the idea of charging the minority of us that 'do the right thing' for a service that we don't need or want.
A reasonable solution, it seems, is to mandate this service (and associated fees), unless a citizen can demonstrate that they are recycling yard waste on their own. OK, now I'm dreaming...
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BullCityGopher, at 12:56 PM
You're still missing the point. Let me try this.
It takes Mrs. D and i three or four weeks to fill up our green trash bin. My neighbors around the corner have theirs overflowing with trash every week. Presumably this includes some recyclables and compostables. Although i'd like to see them educated to avoid dumping these things in the landfill, i don't think it would be a reasonable solution to charge me less or them more for their trash.why?
Because i also receive a benefit from having their trash picked up. The same way that i benefit if everybody's yard waste is picked up. This is not a case of only those receiving the service needing to pay for it. When people don't participate in the yard waste program, they may be saving 60 bucks a year, but it costs the rest of a lot more than that.
By
Barry, at 1:08 PM
Barry: I don't think I'm missing the points you have made so clearly, and we are in agreement, almost. I support everyone in Durham recycling their yard-waste (and all other types of recyclable waste). I see my neighbors with overflowing solid waste bins and no curbside recycling bins week after week. I see the stumps and washing machines dumped in ditches. I recognize that recycling by others is good for you and me, for the landfills, for the ecosystem, etc.
However, I believe the city should enable and incentivize the practice of responsible yard-waste recycling at home. Why should we drive trucks of yard-waste to Virginia or even locally, when at least a fraction of the populus is willing to recycle on their own property? You can have it both ways - provide a comprehensive yard-waste recycling service to the masses and charge them for it. But, at the same time, encourage 'back-yard recycling' by allowing citizens to apply for a waiver from this fee if they can demonstrate that they are meeting some minimal requirements. I admit, this may be a logistical and administrative nightmare, but if it keeps costs (and taxes) down and is good for our environment, it's worth considering.
It's may be a dream, but it's my dream.
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BullCityGopher, at 1:44 PM
I don't currently participate in the yard waste program -- I have a pile in my back yard that gets mixed in with the mulch for most of this stuff. That said, I'd love to see it made mandatory.
The reason is because I have a stormwater ditch flowing through my back yard. When I first moved in, I discovered that the previous residents had attempted to construct a poor man's culvert through the yard 15 years ago or so by taking a bunch of 55 gallon drums, knocking out both ends, and laying them end-to-end through the back yard, then covering them with dirt. This didn't last quite so well as a culvert, and the barrels had rusted, poked up through the yard, and utterly clogged with sediment.
Rather than try to replace it, I uprooted the barrels I could get out of the ground, crushed and buried those that I couldn't, and proceeded to start trying to turn the ditch into a wetland garden. In addition to being more attractive than the mess from before, this has the advantage of producing fewer mosquitoes (in the parts I've successfully converted -- the upper end of the thing has been very stubborn) and in slowing down rainwater and getting many of the nutrient-related pollutants out of it before I send it downstream.
But guess what happens in the fall when all my neighbors rake their leaves into the street? Yep, next big rainstorm, guess where all those leaves go?
Now, we could either spend a bunch of money sending cops or someone else racing around town fining people for raking their leaves into the streets. That's sure to be popular. Or we can send around some trucks to vacuum up the leaves, and give people bins to put other yard waste in, so that they don't by default, dump it into my yard.
By
Unknown, at 3:19 PM
This is insane. They're afraid of raising taxes by $60 per household? Really? A $60 that I have to spend anyway?
The current system is basically a tax on environmental responsibility, and I'm tired of it. Every year I end up with a pile of waste and an expired sticker, and every year the storm drain option is looking more and more attractive.
At least they could have this stupid thing auto renew in some way, and let you pay it via the internets.
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JeremyT, at 5:24 PM
I have a growing pile of stuff in my backyard - I haven't used or paid for the yard waste removal since they shut down the giant (un-licensed) compost pile. I refuse to let them put my yard waste in a landfill. Once the composting is back on-line (which sounds like is months away), I will renew and start taking my stuff to the curb. Sorta irritating - I was always so happy to send my stuff off in the brown can; but the fire and lack of license was (and is) very embarrassing....
By
Unknown, at 6:38 PM
I can understand the points made about clogged gutters and storm drains, but my neighborhood has neither gutters or storm drains and has to get by with ditches.
I don't use the yard waste program, and wouldn't even if it was free. It is a complete mystery to me why this would need to be a weekly service. I would much rather have the police drive though the neighborhod weekly.
I have a mulching mower, so there are no grass clippings to deal with, and most of the leaves get chopped up, too. The rest of the leaves get blown into the woods and are great for keeping the weeds down in the summer.
I do have a nice pile of limbs that I add to continually. Some rabbits live there right now. I don't want the city to haul it away, but if they would come chip it up into mulch for me, that's a service I would use. As long as the rabbits are OK with that.
The City needs to focus on fixing things that are broken, like restrooms in parks all across the city and the 50% of city streets in poor or very poor condition.
By
Todd, at 11:52 PM
For the past two years, we've also had issues with how the yard waste permit has been handled. Two years ago, we paid and didn't receive it, had to call the city and show that yes, we paid for it. By then we'd already had two weeks without pickup, in the fall when we actually use the system quite a bit. This past year, it was another problem--I can't recall exactly but I think we got the sticker but they didn't pick it up anyway.
My point is that even this a minority of residents using the system, it's broken. It would be even more broken if more people participated. Will they have to hire more people to process the checks and send out the stickers? Take time away from other work to field complaints when the stickers aren't sent out? Pay overtime to pick up yard waste on a Saturday, when people complain that the service they paid for was neglected during the week?
My trash gets picked up. My recycling gets picked up. They are paid out of property taxes. No extra check for the city to process, no extra sticker to issue, no phone calls from citizens wondering why their bin is still full. Why can't yard waste be the same?
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Anonymous, at 9:14 AM
Due to the decisions by previous landowners, and a lack of initiative on my part, most of my property is already committed to one task or another (house, yard, garden, shop). I happen to be blessed with two huge oak trees, two large maple trees, and the overhanging branches of a neighbor's oak tree, so composting isn't really an option. (I even built a compost bin, but without direct sun dead leaves just become old dead leaves.)
Unless I want a big pile of yard waste in my back yard, the big brown bin is the best thing since sliced bread.
And if it would stop some neighbors from blowing their leaves into the street come fall, rolling the $60 fee into property taxes seems an obvious thing to do.
By
Jame Gruener, at 10:52 PM
Try shredding the leaves by running a lawn mower over them, then composting them in layers with grass clippings. The grass clippings should generate enough heat to speed up the decomposition of the leaves. Depending on how you're going to use the compost, partially decomposed leaves can be used as a soil amendment.
By
Barry, at 11:01 PM
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