{"id":64993,"date":"2017-11-06T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=64993"},"modified":"2017-11-03T20:03:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T01:03:29","slug":"the-syndicate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=64993","title":{"rendered":"The Syndicate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saint Paul reaches an &#8220;agreement&#8221; on <del>Cuban<\/del> <del>North Korean<\/del> <em>Sopranos<\/em>-style trash collection.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After 14 months of negotiations, seven contract proposals and 10 drafts, St. Paul officials say they have reached an agreement for coordinated collection with the city\u2019s 15 private waste haulers. The city council will vote on the contract next Wednesday and set rates the following week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis contract allows us to provide residents with efficient and equitable service at reasonable and uniform rates,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The &#8220;Reasonable and uniform rate&#8221; is, naturally, about $5 a month higher than I&#8217;ve been paying for the past five years.<\/p>\n<p>Which will, of course, help pay the salary of at least another DFL-union-dues-paying city employee.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mayor Chris Coleman said in a written statement. \u201cIt also ensures that all current haulers will maintain their market share, which was one of my top priorities. It is the right direction for garbage collection in Saint Paul.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bobby Stewart, head of operations with Highland Sanitation, said while he and other haulers had been opposed to coordinated collection, \u201cit is a plan that we can live with and shouldn\u2019t endanger our ability to survive as a business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>City officials say the proposal incorporates most \u2014 though not all \u2014 of their 17 goals, from implementing predictable rates and services to reducing the number of trucks on city streets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Crime is rising.\u00a0 The city&#8217;s tax and employment bases are shrinking.\u00a0 The achievement gap is among the worst in the nation; the public schools are collapsing.<\/p>\n<p>But hey, we&#8217;ve got &#8220;coordinated&#8221; trash collection.<\/p>\n<p>Saint Paul city government; stupid\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>worthless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saint Paul reaches an &#8220;agreement&#8221; on Cuban North Korean Sopranos-style trash collection. After 14 months of negotiations, seven contract proposals and 10 drafts, St. Paul officials say they have reached an agreement for coordinated collection with the city\u2019s 15 private waste haulers. The city council will vote on the contract next Wednesday and set rates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64993","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=64993"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65003,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64993\/revisions\/65003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}