{"id":5518,"date":"2009-10-08T06:51:33","date_gmt":"2009-10-08T11:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5518"},"modified":"2009-10-08T08:49:02","modified_gmt":"2009-10-08T13:49:02","slug":"all-independent-business-must-be-squashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5518","title":{"rendered":"All Independent Business Must Be Squashed"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a war brewing in the Twin Cities metro.<\/p>\n

It’s about\u00a0 trash.<\/a><\/p>\n

About 2\/3 of the communities in the Twin Cities allow or require (depending on your point of view) residents to contract their own garbage hauling.\u00a0 Saint Paul is one of them.<\/p>\n

The rest either run it as a city service, or contract out pieces of the city to private haulers.\u00a0 Minneapolis treats trash as a city service.<\/p>\n

And at all levels governments, lobbing shots about “street repair” and “the environment”, are trying to grab that turf:<\/p>\n

\n
When Bill and Mary Simms got a bill for $1,800 to fix the street outside their home, they knew whom to blame — all those garbage trucks.Each week, at least five trucks rumble past to collect trash in their Fridley neighborhood. They show up as early as 6:40 a.m., waking the retirees.Bill Simms, 67, doesn’t understand why his community needs so many haulers when people in next-door Columbia Heights get by with just one. And he’s furious he has to pay to fix streets worn down by all that tonnage. “I’m fed up,” Simms said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s a common complaint in the Twin Cities, where most communities leave it to residents to hire their own trash collectors. In St. Paul, which is served by 17 haulers, officials could vote on changes this month.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And there can’t be much doubt how that’s <\/em>gonna go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, if you read between the lines, the media is in the bag for the idea of socialized trash:<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
Many homeowners prefer to pick their own haulers, believing that they’re getting the best rate. But they’re wrong, a study commissioned by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) concluded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

F<\/strong>or a 30- or 60-gallon container, those homeowners typically pay at least 50 percent more for garbage service than residents in communities like Minneapolis with organized systems, the study found.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which is an interesting way to lead the piece on the study.\u00a0 “Typically?”\u00a0 Does that mean “on average”, or “anecdotally?”\u00a0 And the article doesn’t bother to mention whether Minneapolis’ garbage system operates at a deficit, or what options people have if they don’t like the service or the rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the Strib piece notes, private haulers charge a very wide range of rates – from double MInneapolis’ rates per month, down to well below <\/em>what Minneapolitans pay.<\/p>\n

It takes just a little work – like, calling a few of the 17 trash haulers that serve Saint Paul, and asking <\/em>them what they charge.<\/p>\n

Which is just too much for some of your hope-and-change-addled neighbors (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

“No one has the time to research all the different companies,” said Shannon Forney, who moved to St. Paul last month. “Having that much choice is actually a burden<\/strong>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sat for a moment, dumbfounded, when I read that.\u00a0 If there’s ever been a better mnemonic to separate a Minneapolis\/Saint Paul DFLer from the rest of society, that’d be it.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
There are other costs, too. City engineers worry about the price of fixing roads damaged by garbage and recycling trucks. Residents complain about the racket, the danger to children, and the emissions.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Someone should ask those “city engineers” how much money we’d save if we got all <\/em>city vehicles – plows, fire trucks, public works – off the streets!\u00a0\u00a0 (UPDATE:\u00a0 Buses too!\u00a0 Nate, in the comments, notes that buses are in everyone’s blind spot when it comes to urban street wear.\u00a0 And it’s true – they’re such a part of the background scenery, even I forgot about ’em).<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is of course nothing but a push to land more unionized government jobs.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, some people get it.\u00a0 People were getting angry about trash long before we had tea parties:<\/p>\n

\n
But anytime officials talk about change, they confront angry constituents. Not one community has retaken control of trash collection in nearly 20 years, according to the MPCA study.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mark Campbell, mayor of Sauk Rapids, was stunned when local officials debated how to reduce the number of garbage trucks on city streets last spring. He said it was the “ugliest meeting I’ve ever participated in.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And as the honeymoon ends for Hope and Change, let’s hope it gets “uglier” – where “ugly”=”citizens actually exercising their first amendment right to tell government what pier to jump off of”.<\/p>\n

I’m going to try to find the MPCA study and the Minneapolis trash budget, and see if I can answer the questions the Strib didn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a war brewing in the Twin Cities metro. It’s about\u00a0 trash. About 2\/3 of the communities in the Twin Cities allow or require (depending on your point of view) residents to contract their own garbage hauling.\u00a0 Saint Paul is one of them. The rest either run it as a city service, or contract out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}