This is just a rundown of thoughts after watching the meeting…I’ve been listening to community feedback regarding the garbage/recycling pickup and rate changes during tonight’s city council meeting and these are the main issues I think need addressed before changes are made:
One size fits all plans and rates isn’t a fair way to bill or provide service to residents. Some only need once a week service; some need twice a week service. Some people have lots of yard waste to dispose of; others don’t. Some people can manhandle the large, heavy totes and others can’t. They are cumbersome to move around because I’ve had one for almost 15 years and dragging it up and down a driveway situated on a hill is not easy and impossible during bad winter weather. I just leave mine in the front yard year round and carry the garbage to it. It’s also very hard to pick up when the garbage hauler tosses it down into the ditch. I have a hard time getting it back upright because I’m not that tall. Even with all that, I can live with the big totes, as annoying as they may be.
I can’t believe yard waste issues and leaves (leaves!) are being so hotly discussed at another council meeting still in 2010. We really should put our heads together and get this worked out. One gentleman brought up the issue that yard waste would only be picked up in November at no extra charge under the new proposal. During other months a $1.50 sticker per yard waste bag or can would be charged. Well, November can be real nasty. It can turn cold fast and stay cold. Trying to rake or dispose of leaves in such weather would cause many to not do anything with their leaves. Personally, I just mulch my leaves with the lawn mower a couple times in the Fall and it takes care of the problem. I never rake! I hate raking. 
I know some people won’t do that and prefer to bag – expanding the free pickup months from October-November makes sense.
The justification for the price increase still hasn’t been explained well to me. This seems like it benefits the garbage haulers 100% and the residents 0%. If anything costs should go down. I also think attaching the fee to municipal water bills is going to cost the city more in the long run – $140,000 a year more just for mailing expenses alone. Clearly more thinking needs to go into this.
The one thing I’m probably at odds with against many of those who spoke against the entire proposal was the recycling portion. I don’t think the city voiced well enough why we need to recycle more. It is very costly to expand or create a new landfill. We would be paying that bill eventually. Doing nothing isn’t going to solve the fact that, unless we begin to recycle considerably more, we’re going to have to trash up more of our land. I don’t understand why people would be so mad that they wouldn’t even entertain the thought of recycling garbage. That part baffles me but people are funny.
So, I would suggest customizable service plans for customers, reducing rates (Waste Management which has been running a pilot once a week pickup program in the city stated at the meeting that they have saved considerable money and could charge in the $14 range easily and be profitable – $2 below what the city is proposing), revamping yard waste regulations and costs and educating the public better about the benefits both environmentally and economically of recycling.
They have their job cut out for them, as one gentlemen acknowledged at the meeting.
City management has suggested changes in garbage and recycling pickup costs, schedules and billing cycles. Once a week service will be provided, cut down from twice a week pick up. Recycling fees, which are charged on Decatur city resident’s water bill, will increase from $1.65/month to $4.61/month. It’s hoped that changing some of the rules regarding recycling pickup will encourage more residents to use the service. Currently only about 15% of residents do. Details about the changes haven’t been revealed yet about easing the recycling rules but I hope they are much simpler than the current ones. Personally, I stopped recycling years and years ago because I couldn’t remember what exactly I supposed to do and if I didn’t do it right, the materials wouldn’t be picked up. I hope that changes.
However, I am concerned about the once a week pickup for all residents. That may be fine if a household is small but there’s many, many weeks when we’ve needed twice a week service. Maybe recycling more will help offset the decreased service. Increasing the rate for garbage hauling when the service provided is essentially going to be cut in half seems a hard sell to Decatur residents. The new rate would be $16.50 a month with annual increases for the next five years.
The city council will be discussing this issue, along with other items during its Tuesday Sept. 7th meeting. Read Entire Council Agenda
It’s been a busy Summer! I can’t say that I’ve accomplished anything but if being dead tired at the end of every day counts for something, I’ve been doing something. I haven’t written much about political or national topics, not because there isn’t anything to write about but rather, I feel war weary. The recession, the oil spill, the earthquakes, the floods and wars are enough to make anyone want to crawl into a hole and hide out for a while. I’m just waiting for the locusts, frogs and flaming hail to descend.
I’ve been busy in my backyard with a new patio and pergola. I even dug out the old pool from the shed and it keeps me entertained. I wade around and scoop up the dead bugs and leaves. I water the new bushes and tend to the flowers. I smack off the moquitoes and pull weeds out of the rocks. I’ve decided that container gardening is for me! No more big gardens that require bending over, chopping out weeds and being swarmed by insects. This year, I’ve actually taken pretty good care of my plants. Usually by July, my vegetable garden resembled a vacant lot overtaken by rogue weeds.
My husband and I have been house shopping as well. We’re hoping to find a country home for my husband’s landscaping business and I still haven’t given up on my dream of owning a horse. I also want a work shed to create my stained glass. Working out of the basement isn’t ideal. When it isn’t wet it’s fine but I still would prefer a better ventilated space to solder. It’s probably not a good idea to have lead around the kids either! We’ll probably put the house on the market in the Spring if everything goes well. So, I’ll be busy cleaning and painting the house from top to bottom and tossing out 15 years of accumulated “things”. If we do move, I’m sure going to miss the house. I get attached way too easily to inanimate objects. My husband is one example. (Couldn’t resist.) If the new owners even touch one of the trees or bushes I’ve planted, I’ll weep.
ADM in Decatur was recently awarded $99 million dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for a carbon sequestration project. Carbon dioxide which would otherwise enter the atmosphere will be turned into its liquid form and injected deep below the ground near its Decatur facility and Richland Community College. The hope is to contain more carbon dioxide, commonly produced by factories and store it deep within the earth, instead of having it released into the air and atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is thought to be a major contributor to global warming .
Carbon sequestration is really nothing new. In fact the oil industry has used it for several years to help attain hard to get oil supplies. It has been tested several places in the world but not on a massively large scale. It’s a very political topic. Most lawmakers are for it. It seems to address global warming while helping bring in big dollar industry to their constituents, however residents often aren’t as gung ho for the practice. People in both the United States and Europe have protested such experimenting in their communities. They sometimes are successful in blocking carbon sequestration projects in their area.
A major proponent of carbon sequestration is the coal industry. If sequestration proves successful, more coal power plants and coal burning factories could be built and utilized. However, there are risks with the containment of so much carbon dioxide below the ground. It wouldn’t take a very large leak to wreak a lot of havoc. Carbon dioxide wells would have to be monitored for decades, if not hundreds of years. Future generations will have to make sure leaks don’t occur from such wells, even if future generation have moved on from our reliance of fossil fuels.
What could a carbon dioxide leak do? Well, there are pockets of carbon dioxide naturally occurring on our planet. In 1986 1,700 people died from a sudden release of carbon dioxide from beneath Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Humans and animals died of suffocation from the release. Such a scenario seems very unlikely in Decatur but suggesting the Gulf of Mexico would fill with oil, from a spill that so far can’t be contained, seemed unlikely three months ago. Things happen.
We now know that science and technology is limited and we aren’t nearly as smart as we sometimes give ourselves credit for. We should know large companies often cut corners and can be less than truthful with the public. We should know that government regulations are often not enforced and government officials are sometimes literally in the sack with the industries they’re supposed to regulating. We should ask ourselves if we trust big business and our government to be honest with us.
Are the residents of Decatur guinea pigs for the project? What about the earthquakes that happen in this region? Is it really a good idea to experiment in a populated area? Shouldn’t we have a say in whether this goes on under our backyards?
Carbon sequestration may prove to be completely safe but I don’t know that I enjoy being the mouse in the laboratory.
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I spent yesterday afternoon downtown shopping with the kids and I was also scouting out office/retail space for my business. Working out the house, with two kids, dogs, a husband and other distractions, isn’t really working out so well. Some people have the discipline to work out of their house. I guess I don’t. I need to get more done. Plus I have ideas for a retail shop. It’s all a couple years down the road but there’s nothing wrong with getting a feel for the area and seeing what’s what.
What struck me the most about our downtown yesterday is the lack of available ground floor retail space. When you think about it, there’s not many buildings left, in a desirable location to place a store. It would be great if one or more of the larger vacant buildings cater to small to medium-size shops. It’s unlikely any retailer moving downtown is going to need 60,000 square feet of space – very unlikely. A start-up business isn’t going to have the funds to extensively remodel an existing building either, so many larger spaces remain largely vacant. Downtown would be a great place for a small business incubator, of sorts. Have an area with affordable rent and incentives for entrepreneurs to move in and give it a try. That can’t be done if the space isn’t available.
The Business Center located on S. Imboden helps new businesses get off the ground with affordable rent, however it’s not an ideal location for retail. It would be great if the same concept could be done downtown.
