Posted on 01/13/2010 4:14:06 PM PST by Libloather
Trash piles up as St. Louis looks for ways to save money
By Jake Wagman
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
01/13/2010
ST. LOUIS — The next round of budget cuts at City Hall may lower costs by letting the waste pile up.
Officials facing an austere fiscal year are eyeing the Dumpster for savings, trying out a plan to reduce trash pickup from twice a week — for years the norm in the city — to once a week.
It's a shift that many smaller cities around the region — and some bigger ones across the country — have already made as their bottom line shrinks.
In St. Louis, a trial run of the abbreviated schedule has found that, yes, it saves money, but has also led to a pile of complaints.
One e-mail to the city called the situation "appalling," with bins so packed with trash the "lids are straight up in the air." Another letter pleaded: "Raise my taxes or whatever but please don't discontinue or reduce the pickups."
"People feel like they're having a service removed from them that they're owed," said Todd Waelterman, director of the city's Streets Department, which includes the Refuse Division. "They're used to this truck coming down twice a week."
MULTIPLE PICKUPS IN AREA DWINDLE
Weekly pickup is standard in Belleville, Edwardsville and Webster Groves. The same is true in Clayton, Chesterfield and Frontenac. The city of St. Charles switched to once-a-week trash pickup last year. Kirkwood and St. Peters are among the few local governments that still offer twice-weekly pickup.
Elsewhere, Denver and Baltimore — facing declining revenue — recently lightened their trash hauling schedules.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
All those liberals should be recycling everything anyway.
Ass.
They pay for the service and Todd's salary to boot.
Liberals are the trashiest people around anyway. They are pure scum, human feces, filthy pigs. I have a number of liberal “friends” who trash & litter whereever they happen to be. Rucycling is done mainly by conservative, morally sound people... not scum of the earth demoRATs or liberal/socialists!!!
Last summer was the first time I’ve driven through St. Louis. I was shocked by the huge number of wrecked, empty brick buildings along the freeway. It looked like a war zone. I could not believe my eyes. What are those idiots doing?
I’ll bet St Louis city funded diversity seminars and Gay/lesbian outreach programs are still going strong.
sarc//
Well....do some of those feelings come from paying for the service?
Was that EAST St. Louis?
If you went through East St. Louis and lived to post about it, your guardian angel must have been working overtime.
Denver after the Obama annointment:
What in the world are these people throwing away? We’ve never had trash pick up more than once a week...and we do just fine.
Maybe they have really small dumpsters.
We used to have multiple trash companies though - you know that bad word —competition— - but the city decided that we didn’t need that, we needed one company. Well guess what, our trash bill has gone up steadily ever since. What a shock.
No. St. Louis proper. I was eastbound on the freeway coming from KC headed into Illinois. I saw all of those buildings before I got to the arch, and crossed the river into Illinois.
Not East St. Louis. My buddy and I were heavily armed.
I live 40 miles south of Denver and have private trash pick-up. $60 each quarter. Similar to Colorado Springs, which I think still has private pick-up.
Bet the real cost in Denver is probably 5 to 10 times that.
we do twice a week here in my town.
I bet East St. Louis is still funding gay libraries, ethnic community centers et al
I've been around a long time and I don't remember twice a week pickup where I live ever. If your garbage can is full, maybe you need to buy another one, dummies. It's worked here all my life and no one complains.
East Saint Louis is a hell hole.
Plus, it's in Illinois.
But, Hickenlooper still spends money on new homeless initiatives, attracting more and more to our state.
I live in a close-in suburb of Denver. No city trash removal. I pay a company which competes with other companies for my business. I pay $13.50 per month for great service. I'm sure if I were paying taxes for the privilege I would be paying at least twice as much for surly city workers to do it.
St. Louis has lost about half of its population in the last 50 years. I believe it was over 800,000 in 1950 and is around 400,000 now. Since St. Louis is a brick city, the buildings still stand, but are empty. Driving on I70, you’ll see a huge number of boarded up places.
The area has more people than ever—they just moved out of the city and into the suburbs. The city’s limits were frozen by state law over 100 years ago, so the city can’t grow.
High crime, poor city services and a vanishing tax base haven’t helped.
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