City Council and Citations

Caught the tail end of last Tuesday's City Council meeting just in time to listen to council comments. The Southern has more info here.  Not sure what brought it on but Jane Adams, the Mayor and Don Monty were discussing an apparent increase in the number of citations the city has handed out for various violations of regulations, with Adams especially concerned that the number of citations handed out had significantly increase above the number handed out in past years.  I have heard similar comments from other local  business owners recently, indicating that the city has upped the level of enforcement in recent months. 

The Mayor defended the actions of the city, indicating that the citations did follow the law and that just because enforcement might have been lax in the past did not excuse the violators from not following the code.  Monty commented that it might be a good idea to contact business owners and gvie them warnings first, rather than pushing ahead with enforcement without warning.

On a related note, I received the above notice chastising me for leaving a bag of litter out by the curb for too long.  Yes, I admit I did  leave a bag of trash out for trash pick up. They didn't and I never got around to pulling it back in. The dating on this is what got me.  The date of issuance is May 15, 2013, with a warning that a Notice to Appear and court fine could result if the corrections were not made but the required time.  The required time:  4 p.m. May 15, 2013.

Maybe it's just me, but if you are going to call me into court with a potential fine, giving me a little more notice than 4 p.m. on the date the warning is issued might be a good idea, especially given that many people leave for work in the morning and do not return home until late afternoon.

This bugged me enough that I called Building & Neighborhood Services for an explanation and was told the trash was viewed like trash cans, which are expected to be removed from the curb the day they go to the curb, which really didn't explain the time constraint.  Oh well, note to self, if trash doesn't get picked up, be sure to pull it in for next week.

Trash Pick Up

The more I have thought about the modification of fees for trash pickup floated at the last city council meeting, the more I find myself favoring the idea.  Currently, the city assesses residents the same fee whether they put out one bag of trash or a dozen. This hardly induces anyone to minimize the amount of trash they put out since there is no penalty suffered by the household for additional refuse.  A low waste household costs the city much less than a high waste household but the low waste household pays the same as the high waste household.

Compare this to your water or electric bill, wherein the more water or power your consume, the higher your bill.  Unfortunately, we don't have any way to easily measure trash flows as we do water or power, so another method would have to be found.  Charging by the bag, like we do with landscape waste, sounds like a good idea, but does the city charge the same for a 33 gallon bag as it would for a 55 gallon bag, or charge one price per bag, with restrictions on weight, as it does with landscape waste?  Your thoughts?