Posted on 01/04/2018 6:54:34 AM PST by SeekAndFind
One of the major challenges facing Los Angeles, as with every other large city, is how to get rid of all the trash and recycling. For a very long time, the City of Angels actually did an admirable job of dealing with both and L.A. was really a respectably clean place. Then the municipal government took a look at the situation and decided that it simply wasn’t good enough. After years of planning, they came up with a scheme known as RecycLA which would “improve” the city’s green footprint, deal with recycling more efficiently and ensure that people working in that industry were all earning a “living wage” for their efforts. And they’d do it all while saving money in the process.
Does the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” leap to anyone else’s mind?
As the Los Angeles Times reports, not long after the full launch of RecycleLA, things quickly turned into what could charitably be referred to as a dumpster fire.
RecycLA, which serves businesses and apartment and condo complexes, was in the planning stages for years but has had what a kind person might call a bumpy rollout.
Others have called it a disaster, a ripoff and a mess. One property manager I spoke to Tuesday had a thought as to who might be in charge.
“This is just literally like the Three Stooges,” said Robert Kilian, who works for Cardinal Management Group and handles the business affairs of 22 homeowner associations in Los Angeles — most of which have had problems with late pickups or price hikes.
Kilian said the 12 homeowners in Hajibekyan’s building had been paying $389 a month for hauling, but that the new bill is more than double that — $825.
There have been reports of costs tripling and even quadrupling for other customers, due in part to added fees tacked on.
Just read some of the stories of apartment complex managers in that article. It’s truly astounding. Back when the trash and recycling were all handled by private companies in a competitive bidding system, recycling was picked up twice a week. Now they are waiting up to two weeks or even more for a pick-up. Trash is building up in the basements and parking garages of these properties like rat-infested mountains. And the prices they are paying have at least doubled, sometimes going up to four times the previous cost. Service is down, costs are up and property managers are angry.
So what went wrong, aside from the fact that the government decided to take over managing the show? The Times reports that the city was faced with the choice of, “maintaining a level of competition among haulers, or they could award exclusive contracts to haulers for designated sectors of the city.” Which one do you think they went with?
So there you have it. The City mandated a number of changes which removed competition, raised labor costs and micromanaged how much recycling would be done. And now there are steaming mountains of garbage in businesses, apartments and condo complexes around the city and the owners are being charged vastly increased costs. Well done, Los Angeles. You’ve really struck a blow for environmental justice, fair wages and a cleaner city.
Public sector union efficiency, no doubt.
So, essentially this became a massive welfare tax.
If people are stupid enough to reject God as a basic tenets of their life, how is it that they think they’re smart enough to do anything else!
Not all city officials were on board with this new plan.I think it is important to give credit to the resistance. From the article,
“But city officials had two models to choose from. They could maintain a level of competition among haulers, or they could award exclusive contracts to haulers for designated sectors of the city. In a 2012 report, then-city administrative officer Miguel Santana recommended the former.”
“ ‘A non-exclusive franchise preserves an open, competitive marketplace which is the most significant factor in maintaining price controls,’ ” Santana wrote.
I guess in LA that makes him sort of a hero.
Tammany Hall lives on. Along with Jerry Brown’s welfare state and vote generating machine.
My city is in the process of changing trash handling. Right now, we buy a sticker for $1.00 that is placed on each 40 lbs of trash. Curbside recycling (which is a complete waste of time and resources but makes liberals feel good) is free.
For that reason alone, we fill our blue recycle bin.
It turns out that 25% of residents never affix stickers to their bags and their trash still gets picked up.
They are switching to city owned large wheeled bins. One for trash, one for recycling. There will be some sort of combined charge for everything.
Since, like most cogent thinkers, I do what’s in my economic best interests, the recycle bin will go completely and forever unused.
Where’s a volcano when ya need it?
$825 (nee $389) EACH or is that amount for the whole building? If it is the latter, then these people have no reason to complain - less than $20 per week per homeowner for garbage disposal is a bargain.
If it is the former, then they are most definitely being ripped off.
Of course, my previous post was predicated on the assumption that the trash service would be reliable and good...
There’s no problem so great, that government can’t make even worse.
Prices for recycled raw materials have crashed in recent years. Our local recycling program is actually LOSING MONEY on everything but aluminum.
But the feel-good virtue signalers continue to run the mandated program at a loss.
“””How Los Angeles Socialized Recycling… And Ruined It”””
It depends upon the objectives behind the change.
LA probably considers it a great success as it likely added hundreds of jobs to the system and created hundreds of committed voters to keep the LA Communists in power.
Public employee unions.
The issues in this article aside, in modern America the fetish to recycle, and to never throw anything away more generally, has almost reached the level of mental illness.
$50 per ton for trash disposal is not bad, but separating everything is a major pain in the a$$.
In my part of rural Virginia there is a large, and successful, privately-owned single-stream recycling facility which accepts trash from various private trash haulers, and from local Counties/Cities.
Residents of my County have a choice of paying +/-$25 a month for weekly “curbside” pick-up from one very large roll-around trash can; or hauling their own trash to the “convenience center” and paying $56 per ton ($8 minimum charge) to dump it.
In either case, there is no need to separate trash from recyclables because everything ultimately ends up at the single-stream recycling facility.
Yet, I read not where the angered masses were dropping their reason for disdain on front steps of the seat of power...
“You WANT the refuse LA govt well, now you GOT the refuse...”. Pu$$y Left coast (pun intended).
"...o how did this get so screwed up? Well, the objectives were noble, and state-mandated in part. The city wanted to reduce landfill waste by encouraging more recycling, it wanted to instill a measure of uniformity in what had been a largely unregulated private industry, it wanted haulers to get rid of exhaust-spewing wrecks and invest in green trucks, and it wanted employees to be paid at least the city’s living wage of $12.73 an hour.
No problems so far..."
No problems so far? NO PROBLEMS SO FAR? What planet do they live on? Oh, that's right, a statist, socialist planet. Here are the problems:
1.) "...objectives were noble..." (Objectives for trash removal should be utilitarian, not noble)
2.) "...state-mandated..." (What could go wrong there?)
3.) "...instill a measure of uniformity in what had been a largely unregulated private industry..." (Because "private industry is a non-sequitur)
4.) "...get rid of exhaust-spewing wrecks and invest in green trucks..." (exhaust-spewing BAD, green trucks GOOD but not at all cost effective)
1.) "...employees to be paid at least the city’s living wage of $12.73 an hour..." (Because we know, from real-life experience, that a "living wage" makes everything more profitable and efficient)
See, this could be another OBJECT example of how more government is BAD, but they will hide and obscure this, and the next time a simliar thing comes up...they will trip on this again. And it will be a lot of people "wondering" again.
It’s long been known that the only thing worth recycling is aluminum.
curbside recycling is a mental illness, industrial recycling, of certain things, like aluminum makes perfect sense.
Last summer, I had my house re-sided. Even though I had a 40 yard dumpster, I took the old aluminum to a recycling center and for about $200 for it. I never considered any of the other waste from the project.
Democrats are socialist. Socialist destroy everything they touch.
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