Re: Recycling & garbage collection in the Inner City; complaints regarding
Dear Mr. Mayor and Common Council Members:
Around 9:30 a.m. this Wednesday morning, I looked out the back window
to check the weather and condition of the neighborhood. To my
surprise, a yellow city garbage truck & crew were collecting trash.
I was surprised because another truck just came by last week Friday,
three working days ago! The week before, it came on Thursday the
26th. The week before that, it came on Tuesday the 17th of
January. So now we're on a Wednesday pick-up?!
So once again, for the umpteenth time over the past 8 years, the
service paid for with my property taxes has not occurred. My
garbage cart was not emptied. It's kept in the yard until
collection day. The yard is locked. It takes two weeks for my
upper flat tenants and myself to fill one cart. Even though my
property taxes are paying to have four carts emptied every two weeks, I'm
actually only providing one or 1/4th that number. AND EVEN THAT ONE
LOUSY CART CAN'T SEEM TO BE COLLECTED!!!!!! (I'd say STINKING cart,
but even that doesn't happen, because I do wash & clean my carts when
necessary!) The cart remains full until I decide to take my chances
by leaving it exposed in the alley for an ""unknown"" collection day -
sometimes for as long as ten days. Almost every time the cart is
left in the alley for that long, some of its contents are strewn about.
I've begun circling each collection day on my calendar; attempting to
predict the next collection day. The almost random collection over
the past month makes this strategy worthless. It also goes without
saying that calling the Sanitation Department district office is
hopeless. They have an almost perfect record of ALWAYS telling me
information that has no relationship to what's actually happening in my
neighborhood regarding garbage collection, street sweeping or gutter leaf
collection. THEY HAVE RESPONDED TO large item pick-ups, although
I've not made one of those calls in more than a year.
The cart's kept in my yard because the longer it stays in the alley,
the more likely its contents will be scattered around by: the wind,
squirrels, cats, rats, scrap collectors, angry kids tipping carts,
playing kids bumping carts, speeding cars hitting carts or numerous other
unobserved methods. The primary reason my yard is locked,
discovered five years ago upon first becoming a property owner in our
city, is to discourage burglars and vandals who almost always use the
excuse, "I'm just taking a short-cut", when found where they don't
belong. (One of the primary reasons we've decreased crime in our
neighborhood these past 5 years is due to more and more neighbors
converting to this strategy of limiting access to rear and side yards.)
In addition to going another week without garbage collection service, my
blue recycling cart has NEVER, EVER been emptied. The main reason
is because I don't create that much recyclable material that can't be
sold to Standard Scrap or Peltz and didn't place the newspaper filled
cart in the alley until early January.
Given that the blue cart wasn't collected by January 25th, I telephoned
my alderman's administrative assistant. She called recycling and
informed me that collections were the last week of the month for my
address. It's now the 8th of February and not only has the blue
cart not been collected, but COINCIDENT with the yellow truck passing
through the alley, it now has several bags of garbage in the side where
only a few plastic jugs and bottles had been. Now, it will never be
picked up. Another blue cart is going to sit and attract rats and
every other kind of neighborhood destroying behavior. (Our alley
already has many blue carts half full of garbage that aren't being picked
up. I even suspect that the recycling collection people don't
bother coming up our alley, if they ever did. They probably assume
our blue carts are all full of garbage - thereby not requiring
collection.)
One point to ponder is this: If the recycling crews are not
picking up blue carts containing garbage and there are entire
neighborhoods where many blue carts contain garbage instead of legitimate
recyclables, JUST WHAT ARE THESE CREWS DOING TO EARN THEIR PAY? Or,
is part of our recycling strategy the assumption that fewer people need
be hired to work in the Inner City because hardly any of the blue carts
here are going to be emptied!?
Complaining about garbage collection has only resulted in more
problems. Each time I've complained to my Alderman's office, within
the next two weeks our alley had trash strewn all over by a sloppy
collection crew, or only my portion of the alley had extra debris left by
'faulty dumpers', or the carts were emptied and left everywhere but where
they belonged or in two instances, only my carts were left upside down
after collection. This time, after 'inquiring' two weeks ago about
recycling collection, there is trash in my blue recycling cart
immediately after an 'unscheduled' collection crew passes through the
alley. Then, within an hour, a yellow pick-up truck drives straight
to my one blue cart and tags it as containing garbage and therefore, not
eligible for pick-up by the recycling crew. You figure it out.
After returning to the city of my birth and most of my upbringing, it's
become increasingly more difficult to remain a concerned, caring,
responsible and involved citizen in the face of the bureaucratic neglect
imposed upon us residents of the Inner City. It's easy to empathize
with the anger and frustration felt by many African American residents of
our city. I've never been in a situation where such seemingly
simple problems remain so insoluble.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to collect garbage. It doesn't
even take a lot of skill to supervise those doing the collecting.
Why can't the streets, alleys and empty lots of
the Inner City look like those of the rest of our city? Why are
there so many people working in the Inner City who don't also live
here? Why are 'excuses' for inaction, incompetence and outright
indifference more prevalent and accepted by you all than solutions,
concern and responsibility? (Why don't we put the names, addresses
and telephone numbers of the crews on the sides of their trucks?
I'm positive the Inner City would become a much prettier sight almost
overnight!) Why don't you and the other officials we've elected to
solve these relatively simple problems do something about them?
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