Why we need a comprehensive yard waste program in Durham

Exhibit 1:
This guy spent a lot of time gathering his leaves up on W. Markham Ave. Sadly, the city of Durham doesn't pick up leaves that are placed in plastic bags, so they'll be there for a while, until enough people complain and the city has to send a special crew out to grab them. They'll probably be dumped in with regular solid waste.


At least the bagged leaves aren't clogging the storm drains, though. This is near the corner of Markham and Washington.


First prize, though, goes to this house on the corner of Urban and Duke which is, it appears, in the midst of a renovation. Someone just decided that the leaves weren't their problem, and dumped a whole yard's worth of them onto the street. Even better, though, they decided to block the curb cut with them as well.

Fortunately, no one in a wheelchair or pushing a baby stroller ever has to use the sidewalk along Duke Street there.

Why is that, you ask?

Well, because these same folks have blocked the sidewalk with this pile of sand for at least a month, now. I first came across this on the Friday after the election, when i was walking back from Brightleaf Square. I just kind of assumed that they had a permit from the city to block the sidewalk for a couple of days while they mixed some concrete as part of the back yard renovations. But here it is a month later, and nothing has changed about the scene.

At least, there's a sidewalk, though.

Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of "Curb cuts to nowhere."

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Enough

Samiha Khanna and Matt Dees are reporting in the N&O today that the revised budget Patrick Baker is presenting to City Council cuts "about $700,000 from $2.1 million initially slated for a comprehensive curbside garbage collection program that would have included yard waste pick-up. It would keep the $60 per year yard waste collection fee, paid only by people who want the service, adding back another $1.1 million into the proposed budget."

I'm paid up through September with my yard waste fees. I'm going to be keeping my sixty bucks and putting it towards a chipper, so i won't be needing the yard waste service any more.

Current figures show that about 18,000 Durham households participate in the yard waste program. When that number drops to 12,000, and all those leaves fall in the streets in November and December, maybe Bill Bell can figure out a way to keep them out of the storm drains and creeks by then. Maybe then the city will realize this isn't service for only the people who want it, but, like recycling and trash pickup, a necessity to keep our city clean, and our landfill managed.

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Yard waste

On Sunday's radio show, i mentioned that i'd be putting up a post about the proposal to roll the yard waste program back into a property tax financed approach, which appears to be dead on the water, as City Council develops cold feet about taxes. I say that because last year, the city authorized the expenditure of $3 million to purchase the trucks necessary to start the program, but now is looking to cut a couple of cents out of the proposed property tax rate, and the yard waste program is top of the list.

I also wanted to disagree with my friend and neighbor Frank Hyman, whose column in the Durham News on Saturday was devoted to making it seem like picking up yard waste was a luxury we can't afford and don't need. Frank was spot on in calling for a repeal of the remaining two cent sales tax on food items at the grocery store. Taxing milk, bread, cheese, vegetables and the like is the single most regressive tax a municipality can implement. But in this case, even though the city gets a share of it, it's the County Commissioners, as i understand it, who'd have to repeal the tax. I lived in Arizona back in the 70s when that state voted to raise the general sales tax by a quarter cent in order to lift the tax from food. Would Durham residents make the same trade? I hope so.

But it's when Frank starts saying that eliminating the bus fare is a more important use of tax dollars than picking up everyone's yard waste that he heads in the wrong direction. Yes, Durham's bus system needs improvement. But there's no evidence that i've seen (and i've looked) that says people don't ride the bus because it's too expensive. Everything i've seen demonstrates that most Durham bus riders do so out of necessity, not choice. If you want to get the optional bus riders, you need to have buses that run more frequently, that actually go to where you need to go, instead of to the downtown hub, and bus stops that aren't, you know, dangerous and impossible to wait at. Somewhere around 10% of Durham bus stops have a bench to sit on, and fewer than that have a shelter from the elements. I've blogged about the bus stops nearest my house in the past, which lack even a sidewalk and turn into huge mud puddles with a slight rain. Improve the service, get more people riding, and there's no reason the bus system can't pay for itself, or come a lot closer than it already does. There are plenty of people who can afford to ride the bus right now who don't. Bring them into the transit system, give them a stake, and it will be a lot easier to find money to continue to improve transit in this town. But as long as those Durham citizens who are able to make a choice choose not to use DATA, the problem will exist.

On the flip side, why should yard waste be treated differently from household trash? We would find it completely unacceptable if people were charged, say $75.00 a year to have their household trash picked up, and 75% of them opted out of the system. Every street corner would become a trash dump. (Not that Durham doesn't have more than it's share of dumping now anyway.) Frank is, as anyone who knows him can attest, a model citizen. When he says he manages to reuse every bit of yard waste and compost every food scrap in his house, he's telling the truth. For the record, i do a pretty good job with that stuff too. I've also been out on no fewer than two dozen trash pickups over the past 5 years, maybe more, all within a mile and a half of my house. And at all of them, i've encountered illegally dumped yard waste. Here's some pictures from the Beaver Pond cleanup last Sunday.




Yes, those are utility poles in the first picture.

Frank writes:

For my money, I'll keep paying a buck a week for the city to pick up what yard waste I can't use on-site. The city can manage any yard waste problems with small investments in enforcement and education.

Sorry, Frank. It can't. The city relies on people like me to give up my free time to haul yard waste out of public spaces. I'm done with that. My free time is at a premium, and i'm reclaiming it. And i'd rather everyone pay 30 bucks a year (or 60 cents a week, if you want to put it in those terms) than just the relative handful of us who subscribe to the yard waste pickup program. A number which will decrease by at least one the next time the bill comes due.

To be completely honest, Durham, in many places, looks like shit. And when it looks like shit, people treat it like shit. If we had a city full of Frank Hymans, we'd be in much better shape. But we don't.

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