Stop trashing Durham

From the comments section of the Durham Central market post:

I look forward to finding Eat Local Y'all litter on my neighborhood cleanup instead of wrappers for the Mcdouble juicy grease burger.

Couple of months back, i found this little known section in the Durham Municipal Code of Ordinances, Chapter 26, Article 5, Section 26-121:

It shall be unlawful for any person selling goods, wares or merchandise of such nature that the purchasers thereof throw the containers or wrappers of such goods, wares or merchandise or portions of the goods, wares or merchandise themselves on the sidewalks, streets or other public ways of the city to allow such containers, wrappers or portions of such goods, wares or merchandise, or any part thereof, to remain thereon. Any person selling goods, wares or merchandise of such a nature shall also keep his or her premises clean and free from such containers or wrappers or portions of goods, wares and merchandise, so that the same will not be blown or otherwise transferred to the streets, sidewalks or other public ways.

You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that. If you sell anything that could end up as trash, it's your responsibility to see to it that it doesn't end up as trash.

Now, file this alongside the barking dog provision of the noise ordinance at the top of the list of unenforceable sections of the Municipal Code. Even worse, it doesn't seem as though one iota of effort was made to educate the public about the existence of this ordinance. Except for you, dear reader, and myself, i doubt that a dozen Durham residents are aware of this section of the Code.

But here's a thought. Next time you see a McDouble wrapper on your street, or even worse, an empty plastic bag with a store logo on it, don't pick it up*. Take a picture of it with your cell phone or digital camera. Then file a Durham One-Call request, attach the picture you've just taken, and ask for enforcement of Section 26-121 of the Municipal Code. I bet if One-Call gets a hundred requests in June for this service, somebody at City Hall will start thinking about this as a problem.

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*If it's a plastic grocery bag, yeah, you'll need to pick it up. Some bird is going to strangle on it. But take the picture anyway.

Continue reading Stop trashing Durham

Little known municipal laws

Was looking something up in the Durham City Code earlier and stumbled upon this. Gotta say, we've got some pretty good laws on the books in Durham. Wonder whose responsibility it is to have this one enforced:

Sec. 26-121. Duty of seller of goods, etc., of such nature that purchases throw containers, etc., on sidewalks and streets.
It shall be unlawful for any person selling goods, wares or merchandise of such nature that the purchasers thereof throw the containers or wrappers of such goods, wares or merchandise or portions of the goods, wares or merchandise themselves on the sidewalks, streets or other public ways of the city to allow such containers, wrappers or portions of such goods, wares or merchandise, or any part thereof, to remain thereon. Any person selling goods, wares or merchandise of such a nature shall also keep his or her premises clean and free from such containers or wrappers or portions of goods, wares and merchandise, so that the same will not be blown or otherwise transferred to the streets, sidewalks or other public ways.
(Code 1964, § 9-56; Code 1982, § 10-107)

What that means is that if you own, say, a McDonald's or other fast food franchise, and any of your stuff is packaged such that people might throw it out on the streets, it's your responsibility to see that it gets picked up.

But as Mrs. D has pointed out on numerous occasions, nowhere is picking up other people's trash as much a part of the social calendar as it is in Durham. So as long as we have all of these volunteers willing to pick up other people's trash, we can have all the fancy laws to make our elected officials feel good as possible, and they don't have to worry about how to actually, you know, enforce them.

Continue reading Little known municipal laws

The return of the prodigal recycling cart

So last week, on trash and recycling pickup day, my blue, 90 gallon, roll-out recycling cart vanished sometime between 9:30 pm and 9:00am, when i went to retrieve it after our recycling was picked up.

I duly reported this to the city problem solving branch. Today, on trash pickup (but not recycling pickup - we only do that every other week now) a recycling cart was waiting in my front yard when i arrived home from work.

Not just any brand new recycling cart either. This one has definitely been around the block a time or two. There's about a half pint of viscous fluid on the bottom, and a distinct aroma of rancid tuna oil all around this thing. I'm sure it's had some adventures around Durham for the past week.

Oh, if it could only talk.

Continue reading The return of the prodigal recycling cart

Recycling carts

At least 3 people in my neighborhood, myself included, found our entire recycling carts had gone missing yesterday after pickup. There's 3 possibilities that occur to me, although maybe you can think of something i'm missing.

1 - Someone is going around before the recycling is picked up and taking the full carts. As the price for recyclables is at a rock bottom, and most of what i've got in my bin is packaging materials anyway, i've got to assume they'd be looking for financial information, account numbers, etc.

2 - Someone is going around after the recycling is picked up and taking the empty carts. I can't think of a single reason why this would be fun, but i'm pretty naive about some things.

3 - There's a defective recycling truck out there that's occasionally dumping the entire cart along with its contents into the back of the truck. Nobody at Solid Waste has noticed this yet.

This being Durham, which do you think is the most likely?

Continue reading Recycling carts

Speaking of starts

We're well into the second week of Durham's new curbside recycling program. That's the one where you put all of your recyclables, unsorted, into one big 90 gallon rollout cart that gets picked up every two weeks.

The idea is that it's more cost effective for the city to do it this way, being able to use the automated trucks for pickup, being able to cover the whole city with fewer people, since it's only picking up half the city every week, and increasing participation and amount of recyclables kept out of the waste stream. The pilot program started in a couple of Durham neighborhoods last year supposedly increased the number of household that were recycling by some 40 or 50%, and the volume of goods picked up by even more than that, over the square 20 gallon blue bins.

That's the theory, anyway.

In my neighborhood, which i think had a pretty high participation rate under the old program, there are still entire blocks waiting for their new rollout carts. I posted a message to the neighborhood listserv asking for people who hadn't gotten carts yet to drop me a line, and my inbox is pretty much filled with them this morning. I'm willing to cut Solid Waste a little slack on this, but i may be in the minority based on what i'm reading. Here's a taste:

This morning I went outside to find a blue recycling cart in front of our house. No other houses received them. I took it back beside our house, dumped in all of my accumulated recycling, and it's now 75% full.

About an hour later, a crew came by and started delivering carts to all the homes on E. Trinity, including giving us a second cart. I saw this and gave it back since I don't need a second one. They didn't seem to have any idea that anybody else was delivering them.

Oh, and another thing I just realized; none of the carts included the promised plastic bag with information about the new recycling program. How are people who are not on a mailing list supposed to know that their recycling day changed from Friday to Wednesday, much less about the additional items that can be recycled, the new bulky item pickup, or the day-after pickup of yard waste and bulky items.

Oh yeah, I hope that you can read English because I have yet to see any information about the garbage/recycling changes available in Spanish.

Can you say clusterfuck? I knew you could....

And altough i'm going to protect my emailer's identity, you should know that this person is actively involved in neighborhood uplifting, and not someone who, like me, just prefers to whine about how things are going.

Continue reading Speaking of starts

More yard waste stuff

Councilor Woodard reminds me in the comments that the switch from a fee based yard waste program to a program funded out of general revenues is not a done deal. Council is in the process of creating a budget for the 08-09 fiscal year. If you agree that picking up all of the yard waste in the city is a good idea, please let Council know. You can send an email to all seven members of the City Council by writing to council@ci.durham.nc.us

Continue reading More yard waste stuff

Durham: Left hand, meet right hand

Longtime DE readers, and people who know me in the real world, know that i really don't like the city's current yard waste program. Durham is practically the only city in NC that charges both a start up fee, to purchase a yard waste cart, and a monthly subscription fee to have the cart emptied. It's almost certainly the only city which does that and does not have a policy in place to pick up all of the leaves that fall off our trees each autumn.

The end result is predictable - fewer than 25% of Durham's households participate in the yard waste program, there's illegal dumping of yard waste in the trash, in empty lots, and in our creeks and streams, and whenever there's a decent amount of rain, our storm sewers back up and clog, resulting in localized urban flooding.

Nevertheless, every year for the past 6 years, Mrs. D. dutifully writes, over my protestations, a check to the city to continue our participation in the yard waste program. And, just as dutifully it seems, the Solid Waste Department neglects to send us the sticker for our container indicating that we've paid up. My part in the program is to not notice that the sticker hasn't arrived until after i do my winter raking and place all my leaf bags out at the curb.

That's what i did two weekends ago. I generally wait till late December/early January to do this project because, for some reason, the trees on my block tend to hold on to their leaves till after Christmas. Some of my oaks still haven't dropped their leaves. And on Friday, Jan. 11th, the fruits of my labor lined the curb in front of my house, waiting for the yard waste truck. I made sure no cars blocked the path. When i got home that afternoon, all the other yard waste on the block had been picked up, except for mine.

That's when i realized that the sticker on the brown cart said "good through Sept. 07." So i called Mrs. D., who confirmed that we were paid up. I called Durham One-Call, who transferred me to the yard waste program, who confirmed that we were paid up, that a sticker had never been mailed, that one would be put in the mail that very afternoon, and that a supervisor would be on a truck the very next morning (Saturday the 12th) to pick up my yard waste. I said i appreciated that, but that it wasn't necessary. So long as it got picked up before the bags fell apart i'd be happy. She assured me it was no trouble.

So i was a bit surprised when i saw a yard waste truck drive up my block on Saturday morning, turn around at the end of the street, and drive away, without touching my yard waste. Maybe it was still a sticker issue?

I called back on Monday afternoon, spoke to a different person in the yard waste program who confirmed that we were paid up, that a sticker hadn't been sent to us yet, that she was putting one in the mail immediately, and that when i got it i should put it on the cart. And that my yard waste would be picked up on the next scheduled run through the neighborhood, which is tomorrow. Meantime, i should just leave my yard waste at the curb.

Sticker arrived in the mail on Tuesday. I put it on the cart immediately.

And lo and behold, when i got home from work last night, the yard waste had magically disappeared. Now i can get the leaves that are piled up in the backyard out to the curb this weekend.

I can't wait till we lose this program later this year, and start picking up everyone's yard waste regardless of whether they've got a sticker or not. Kudos to Donald Long for getting council to go along with the new program.

UPDATE: Cool. Our second yard waste sticker arrived today. Maybe i can sell it on eBay.

Continue reading Durham: Left hand, meet right hand

Durham - gotta love it

Before i disappeared for a few days last week, i had a conversation with one of the newer neighbors down at the end of the block. Seems the folks at the house across the street from them were piling up aluminum cans in the back yard, making a rather substantial heap. As it happens, that back yard opens up onto our block, so it functions as a second front yard.

It shouldn't need to be said that a pile of aluminum cans about a cubic yard in size is not an art project or an expression of free speech. It's a pile of trash that needs to be picked up, regardless of what neighborhood you live in.

It didn't seem as though my new neighbor was making any headway by asking the residents to clean up their trash, so i said when i got back, if it was still there, i'd make some inquiries with the city. I drove by the house on Tuesday night, and yes, it was still there.
Yesterday, i posted an email to the InterNeighborhood Council listserv, and the Partners Against Crime, District 2 listserv.

One of my neighbors has a huge pile of aluminum cans in their back yard. (As it happens, their back yard fronts the street i live on, so is visible to everyone who lives on or traverses the street.)

Can anyone tell me who to contact about this problem (besides the neighbors, of course.)

Is this the responsibility of the Solid Waste Department, Neighborhood Improvement Services, or the Planning Department?

My experience with Durham's overlapping jurisdictions with problems like this is that it's easy to spend the day on the phone bouncing from one department to another without actually ever speaking to the one person you need to solve your problem. I know that Durham One-Call (560-1200) is supposed to streamline this process, but in cases like this, i've found them to be just as confused as i am.

After my post, i was contacted directly by both Constance Stancil, Director of Neighborhood Improvement Services, and by Donald Long, Manager of the Solid Waste Department, both offering to get their staff on the problem immediately. So far, so good.

We wrote back and forth several times, especially Ms. Stancil and i, narrowing down the problem, and discussing some other issues related to trash and neighbors on the 1700 block of Avondale Drive especially. I thought things were under control, and that she had assigned the task to the right people. Then i got this email from the staffer who she had brought into the loop to tackle the problem. (I'm leaving his name out of the discussion for now.)

Mr. Ragin Avondale is not my area, you need to contact inspector XXXX or give him a call at 560-4570 xXXX

Fortunately, sometime between Tuesday night and this morning, the residents (or the neighbors, or maybe just one of those folks who walks down the street on garbage pickup nights collecting aluminum cans from the recycling bins) managed to get the pile of cans removed. Meaning i don't have to spend any time this morning on the phone trying to track down the right person to take care of this. I can catch up on my workload (always a good thing) and this weekend i can get to work on the pile of trash that my previous neighbors in the back have dumped into the copse of trees between our properties.

Details and pictures of that adventure will probably be forthcoming next week.

Oh, and if you're curious as to why i had to comment about a pile of trash not being an art project, check out this email that appeared on the INC list in response to mine:

I don't know if it is illegal to stockpile (as you suggest) aluminum cans in ones yard. I read in the Herald Sun today that nude sunbathing in your yard is legal. So maybe aluminum can piles are as well. It's private property and the laws tend not to infringe on ones rights to do some things. I recall one neighborhood up in arms about a series of painted bathtubs in a yard in their hood. Turns out it's art. Maybe the cans are some work of a yet-to-be discovered metal artist. Who knows. If they bother you, just go and talk to the folks and see if you can recycle them.

Go ahead and re-read my first email. I can't see where i suggested that the pile of cans was illegal. Just that it needed to be picked up and removed. I wanted to know which city agency was responsible. The assumption that the residents had not been spoken with was simply unwarranted. I'll tell you, as Ed Norton might have said once to Ralph Kramden, some days i have it up to here with libertarians.

Continue reading Durham - gotta love it

You're crazy for taking the bus

You're crazy for taking the bus
Well, i'm crazy, so what's the fuss

- Jonathan Richman

I want to ride DATA, the Durham bus system with the cool name. But commuting to work is out. I'd have to ride to the Duke Medical Center to catch the TTA shuttle to Chapel Hill, then transfer to another shuttle to go back to Hillsborough. My 15 minute commute would be an hour and a half under ideal circumstances. Miss a connection and it's easily two hours.

But what about riding the bus from Duke Park to downtown? I've got a bus stop about 100 yards from my front door down at Avondale Dr.


Let's get a closer look at it.



That's right. The Avondale bus stop is a couple of patches of dirt butt up against one of the busiest thoroughfares in town, with a nice tree to shield your presence from the vision of drivers of oncoming traffic. Not much protection from the elements, either. It was thoughtful of NCDOT to build a sidewalk up from the new I-85 collector/distributor. If only someone had been able to extend the sidewalk for another 30 freakin' feet, at least bus riders wouldn't have to stand in a mud pit whenever it rains.



Of course, proximity to speeding automobiles, lack of shelter from the elements, and a mud pit aren't the only attractions of the Avondale Dr. bus stop.



There's also the wide variety of roadside trash to provide amusement. That's right. There's no trash can provided at the bus stop for people who have to wait as much as 30 minutes between buses. Who knows whose responsibility it is to actually pick the stuff up. I work with Keep Durham Beautiful once a year to do a cleanup, but within a couple of weeks, it looks like this again.

Things aren't much better on the northbound side of Avondale.



Just as unsafe, just as shelterless, and only slightly less trashy. Probably because the rains wash it down the gully to collect a little further down the road. it makes me wonder if proximity to the bus stop is a contributing factor to why this house has been vacant and abandoned for the past 4 years?



Or why this very attractive house just one door up from the bus stop has sat unsold for over 2 months even though the owners have dropped their price by 20%?



No, you don't have to be crazy to ride the bus in Durham. But for me, it's a half hour walk to downtown from my house. I'd rather get the exercise. Maybe when Durham's administrators start taking their responsibilities a little more seriously, we can have a transportation system to be proud of, rather than one that we avoid.

The city is only getting bigger and more populated. The bus system is going to have to serve more and more people as time goes on. If people who don't use the bus are going to be asked to subsidize the system (and that's OK with me. I don't expect a municipal bus system to turn a profit or break even. I do expect it to provide a necessary service.) the least the city can do is put a better face on the system.

Continue reading You're crazy for taking the bus

Trash talkin', traffic calming, and other Durham goodies

I've been so busy this week, that i've fallen a bit behind in posting things i wanted to talk about. Let's try to catch up.

Earlier in the week, Ray Gronberg over at the HeraldSun posted a bit about the new city budget. Kevin did a good job analyzing some of the Parks and Rec stuff in the budget. I was more intrigued by the mention of "seed money" for creating a universal yard waste program.

Brief background - a few years ago the city switched to a subscription based yard waste pickup program. It's illegal in the state of North Carolina to mix yard waste (grass clippings, leaves, small branches, etc.) with regular household waste. So you pay 40 bucks or so for a separate brown yard waste cart, and then on top of that, you pay another 60 bucks every year to have the city pick up your yard waste. Participation in the program has averaged around 20 - 25% of Durham's households. Being generous, this means that at least 70% of Durham's yard waste is either being illegally mixed in with regular waste, swept out into the streets to clog our storm drains, or illegally dumped somewhere. I've long been a proponent of rolling yard waste pickup back into the tax program, and picking up everyone's yard waste, without forcing them to pay a separate fee.

Ray's article wasn't too clear on how this is going to work, so i emailed Donald Long, Director of the Solid Waste Management Department, to get some details. Let me share what Mr. Long said.

What was adopted (well, almost pending the June 18th official vote) is not a yard waste program, but a comprehensive program for all curbside collections. I
think it played out as a yard waste program because this is the aspect making the most dramatic change. We will collect curbside household solid waste, bulky item, bulky brush, and yard waste effective Sept. 1, 2008. It is taxed based program-no fees. The yard waste fee will stop sometime between Jan. 2008 and March 2008. We are still brainstorming the possibility of refunds.

In regards to yard waste carts, it will be the same as solid waste carts, we provide the first one and the citizen pays for any cart after that.

This is pretty good news, and an important step in keeping our streams, creeks, and stormwater drains open and flowing, and helping to clean up our town. Thank you, Donald Long.

Kevin and Michael both had things to say about the Indy's Best of the Triangle Annual, which came out this week, and especially Bob Geary's interesting article about Durham. Michael manages to wax philosophical about growing old while realizing that Bob has discovered a happening part of the Durham scene that he didn't know about. Good stuff.

He's right, to a point, that Bob didn't get to a lot of what makes Durham a great place to live.

I'd like to think that my little conversation with Bob, which extended far beyond the intivation to the Beaver Queen Pageant, and included a plea to not make Durham look too good because we don't necessarily want too many Raleigh folks clogging up our restaurants and bars, had something to do with that.

Finally, once again over at Kevin's, a new commenter has been making some rather inane remarks about urban and suburban lifestyles, and his particular right to make any neighborhood street in the downtown area his own personal speedway.

I'm not really sure how to say this any more clearly. Public streets in the urban areas of town are supposed to be shared among all users, not just those in motor vehicles. We have some serious design issues with some of our urban streets, which create safety issues for people on foot, in wheelchairs, pushing strollers, etc. In other words, a large number of people who use the streets. The problem is that the design of a number of these streets encourages drivers to use them at speeds that are not safe for people out of cars. Putting up some signs to tell drivers to slow down only goes so far. If people in all parts of Durham weren't concerned and, to be honest, pissed off by people driving too fast through their neighborhoods, we probably wouldn't need to be spending lots of money on traffic calming devices and other measures to get folks like MarcusOne to slow the fuck down.

It's your choice to live in northern Durham if you want. And your choice to work in RTP or Chapel Hill if you want. But that choice doesn't come with the right to treat other people's residential streets as though they were freeways. Don't try to shave 3 minutes off of your 30 minute commute by doing 50 mph on a residential 30 mph street. And don't try to argue that it's selfish of the people whose lives you are putting at risk when they take steps to slow your ass down.

That's just stupidity.

Continue reading Trash talkin', traffic calming, and other Durham goodies

Still more trash talkin'

Solid Waste Management Director Donald Long this morning on the InterNeighborhood Council listserv:

I favor an all user-tax based program.

The News and Observer reported last week that:

City residents would pay a single annual fee of $51.48 to have garbage, yard waste, recycling and bulky items collected from their curbsides, if the City Council approves a proposal from Solid Waste Management Director Donald Long.

I've emailed Mr. Long expressing my support for the tax based program, and pointing out the discrepancies in these two statements. I'll post an update when he responds.

UPDATE: Donald Long writes:

The N&O article simply stated the options; he never asked which option I prefer. I attempted to cover all the bases and put the conceivable options on the table for the CM and the Council to consider.

So hopefully our elected officials will now make the right decision and make sure that everyone's trash and yard waste gets picked up. In a perfect world, the city's yard waste composting facility will be back in business early in the next fiscal year as well.

Continue reading Still more trash talkin'

Trash talkin' - they still don't get it

Police protection is an essential city service. You pay for it with your property taxes, and everyone is entitled to it, regardless of the worth of their property, or even if they don't own any. Same with firefighting.

Should be the same with garbage collection.

So why is the N&O reporting today that Durham's Solid Waste Department is proposing rolling the yard waste, trash, and bulky item pickup into a new program with a separate, $51/year fee?

Granted, this is a bit of a reduction for the $60/year separate yard waste fee. But that program only serves about 20% of Durham's households. Who knows where the rest of the community is dumping their yard waste?

Charging a separate fee for trash collection will have the same effect on participation. There's enough trash on our city streets and in our parks and empty lots as it is. Encouraging 30%, 40%, or even 50% of our households to opt out and dispose of their household waste on their own is a dumb idea that should never have seen the light of day.

Just pick up the trash and pay for it out of general revenues. If you need to charge an extra fee for picking up bulky items like refrigerators, that's fine. But picking up the household trash is an essential city service.

Treat it that way.

Continue reading Trash talkin' - they still don't get it

More trash talking

Following up on a post earlier this week about the city charging residents $60/year to participate in a yard waste pickup program which is essentially non-existent, i'd like to note this email sent out over the InterNeighborhood Council listserv yesterday:

On Wednesday May 23rd, City Manager Patrick Baker presented us with a letter dated December 18, 2006 from NCDENR (North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources) to Donald Long, Director of Durham's SWM, permitting Durham to transport solid and yard waste in the same truck from Durham's transfer station to Brunswick Waste Management Facility, LLC Landfill located in Brunswick, Virginia.

With all due respect, having permission from a bureaucrat in Raleigh to mix our yard waste and regular solid waste in a Virginia landfill is not the issue.

The issue is that the city of Durham still prohibits its residents from mixing yard and solid waste; the city of Durham charges its residents extra to have their yard waste picked up; and the city of Durham saw no need to mention the fact that its yard waste program had disappeared until a the N&O pointed it out to the public.

Nobody has yet to explain to me why i should be charged $60 a year to participate in a program that is essentially non-existent.

Suppose i'm a phone service subscriber, and i pay an extra $5 a month for a voice mail service. Now suppose that the phone company rolls voice mail into its basic package at no extra charge, but keeps collecting my $5 a month anyway. And doesn't tell me its changed the terms of its service. Don't you think i'm going to be pissed off? And imagine how pissed off i'd be if i didn't have the choice of switching phone service providers at my earliest opportunity.

If i want my yard waste picked up in the city of Durham, i have exactly one option. Many Durham residents don't even take that one option, instead figuring out ways to dump their yard waste illegally, making it someone else's problem. Those of us who pay for the service do so because it's the right thing to do.

Not charging us for a non-existent service is also the right thing to do.

Continue reading More trash talking

Trash talking

The N&O reports that the Durham Solid Waste department has been mixing yard waste with regular trash since late last year. As you may recall, the city charges an extra $60 a year to pick up yard waste, on top of the 40 bucks or so it gets for the separate yard waste cart. In fact, the city's website cautions us to, "(r)emember that State laws prohibit yard waste from being mixed with regular household waste." The website also notes that the city recycles all yard waste at it's compost center, which does not reflect the fact that the compost center has been closed since late last year, following a fire and the revelation that it lacked the necessary permits from the state.

So what does Donald Long, the new Solid Waste Department director have to say about the situation?

"That's a very temporary arrangement," said Donald Long, the city solid waste management director.

The city will continue to collect the $60 annual fee, Long said. "The fee is for us to pick it up," he said. "The fee is not contingent on what we do with it."

Uhhh, Donald? Fewer than a quarter of the city's households participate in the yard waste program. Even allowing for some cart sharing among neighbors, probably 2/3 of the yard waste in the city goes uncollected. We need to be encouraging people to participate. If you're not going to eliminate the fee, at least those of us who have been paying it while we don't need to could get a discount on the next year's service?

Continue reading Trash talking