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Reader: City Trash Pickup Changes Are A Mistake, Insult |
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Friday, 15 August 2008 |
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To the Editor:
I just read the letter from Trent Jones in the July 2008 issue regarding the City of Safety Harbor’s trash pick up.
I have lived in Safety Harbor for about 37 years. I attended Safety Harbor Elementary and Middle Schools. I now am raising a family of my own and have children in both of those same schools.
A couple of months ago I received a letter from the city telling me in essence that they would be charging more for trash removal and doing less. They meant it.
In the past I, like Trent, never worried about the city picking up yard waste and tree trimmings. But now all that has changed. I recently trimmed two palm trees. I had my eight-year-old son help me by dragging the palm fronds to the curb. A couple days later I got a notice from the city that they would not take the branches unless they where cut into four foot lengths and bound with twine in easy to handle bundles. Not only that but they would only take four of these bundles! Any more than that and they would charge an extra fee.
Now let me put this into perspective for you. My eight-year-old son took about 10 minutes to haul these branches and pile them up. But apparently the men working on the garbage trucks cannot handle the job unless they are “gift wrapped” for them. Maybe my son could get a job on the truck? Well I am not about to spend an hour or more cutting them down and bundling them up when it would only take an adult about one minute to throw them into the back of a garbage truck.
I ended up taking the branches to the dump myself. It costs $10 to dump a pickup truck, plus the gas there and back. This would have cost the city next to nothing as their truck has to go there anyway. The time to load it would have been one to two minutes and the branches would not take up any appreciable space in the garbage truck.
I often hear people complaining about immigrants coming to this country taking jobs away from them. I hope I never hear a City of Safety Harbor employee complain. Here they have a good job, probably making 15 to 25 dollars an hour plus benefits and they don’t want to get their hands dirty! Another complaint I hear is about jobs being outsourced to other countries. I am not surprised. We have a city sanitation department that does not want to work. I wonder if we can figure out a way to out source the management of the city to another country. They couldn’t do any worse.
With regard to Mr. Jones comments on recycling, I agree it is a shame the city is no longer taking glass. Have you seen what scrap metal goes for these days? Why do you think they took it over themselves from contractors? There is big money in scrap metal! Aluminum cans are worth $.70 a pound, (that’s $.03 per can). Other aluminum is $.60 per pound, steel is $.12 per pound and some coppers are well over $2 per pound. They don’t want to be bothered with glass since there is no money in it. It’s not about helping the environment, it’s about money!
Personally I am not going to give this money to the city. I collect all the metal waste from our home and when I get a couple of garbage cans full I take it in myself. It’s free money.
I hope the city wakes up and realizes the mistake they have made. It’s one thing to raise prices when you are providing an excellent service but what an insult to raise our rates then do less work.
Tim McKenney
Safety Harbor
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