By:  Diane Benjamin

The first point citizens need to understand is this:

The City made garbage and bulk waste an Enterprise Fund so they could say it has to pay for itself.  Since it doesn’t, prices have to be raised.

The Coliseum is an Enterprise Fund, but it’s not required to pay for itself.  Why?

Here’s the problem:  The City allows citizens to set out anything they want for pick-up.  Things like couches, refrigerators, washers etc can be set on the curb at anytime and the City will haul it away for free.

I don’t know of any other City that allows free hauling.  Picking up garbage is not what is killing the City budget, it’s hauling off BULK WASTE.

Instead of using common sense and stopping the practice, the City would rather raise rates to everybody.

One Ward 4 candidate made a good point last night at the TEA Party forum.  Dan Metz suggested allowing bulk waste one day a month.  Curb shoppers and people who could profit from recycling metal would grab a lot of it before the City was forced to haul it to the dump.  Common sense however has no play in City thought.  Raising taxes is much easier.

I’m sure the excuse used by the City would be people can’t be trusted to grab bulk waste, not hurt themselves, and not sue the City.  The City probably has code that makes the practice illegal.  Again, common sense doesn’t apply.

The best solution is to ban bulk waste.  The dump will accept it, citizens just need to get it there.  Maybe the private sector will transport for a nominal fee.  Instant job creation!

Of course. government didn’t think of that.