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September 26, 2006
For Just $25 More, You Can Get Your Bin Monogrammed!
When last we considered the curbside recycling controversy, it looked like Frank DePinto and his recycling activists had managed to collect enough signatures to force the issue onto November ballots. But he wasn’t so sure. “There’s a lot of grey areas,” he told The Pulse. “On quite a few of [the petitions], they had missed putting the date, they had missed putting their address or zip code. These are what I call the grey areas. That’s where the politics come in. There could be the mayor and his boys saying, ‘There’s a lot at stake here – we don’t want this sucker passed.”
Turns out DePinto was right to worry – though perhaps not for those reasons. The Hamilton County Election Office count of the petitions found that even though more than 7,000 signatures were submitted, only 4,992 were valid. That was well short of the necessary 6, 372. “We gave them every benefit of the doubt,” election official Charlotte Mullis told Chattanoogan.com. “We put in every possible effort for them.”
So no dice. And, if the city’s Public Works department has its way, no curbside service for glass, aluminum, electronics or plastic. In the proposal submitted to the City Council last Tuesday, curbside pickup would be reduced to once a month, for paper only – and participating citizens would have to purchase a recycling bin for $70.
Oh boy! You mean I can shell out 70 smackers to participate in a failed recycling program that I wasn’t using in the first place? Where do I sign up?
The Council was equally skeptical. “Why do you think people will pay $70 for a trash can when they don’t have to?” Marti Rutherford asked Public Works officials. Council members instructed Public Works to keep the full curbside program running monthly until November 1, and to submit a report on how to use its $100,000 education budget to encourage use of the new program.
Hey, maybe they could use that $100,000 to buy hammers. Then they could hit people over the head until they were stupid enough to spend $70 on a recycling can.
Addendum: The bin plan has now been trashed. (Get it?!?)
BlogBeats | By colrus | 09:57 AM
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