" Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Breeders! Vote Democratic! Thanks for Playing!"
Mayor Rahm Emanuel today said the remaining 340,000 Chicago households that don’t have curbside recycling will get it by the end of 2013. Hip, Hip, Hipster* Hooray! Soon the Breeders will leave! Breeders are the people in the neighborhoods - lower middle class taxpayers who own homes and have children. They do not have disposable income. They have recycled income - debts, mortgages, Catholic school tuition and taxes - lots and lots of taxes.
For the past year, this simple, humble and damn fine looking reader and writer has posted on the once looming and now attached Garbage Grid and the its end-game.
The administration says it can afford to expand the recycling program because pickup has become more efficient in the six months since two private firms started competing with city crews . . .
The Garbage Grid is all the rage - ask Detroit, Buffalo and Cleveland. This is plan that divides city services ( snow-plowing, tree-trimming, garbage collection and, of course, the Sierra Club's Raison d'uriner dans son pantalon, Recycling) by a geographic grid, where once a Ward Boss controlled, directed and dispensed services. You see, Chicago's Charter gave us a weak Mayor form of urban government, whereby the City Council, aldermen, really governed and the May'r appointed heads of departments. One might think it were t'other way around. T'aint.
April 1st, April Fools Day, was the launch of the garbage grid which the 50 lambs of the City Council offered up themselves to Rahm -the boss of this here Sanhedrin - knifing and holocaust ( Old Timey Barbecue) to follow.
Yesterday's announcement that more Wards will have curb-side re-cycling soon was met with Yeas! Chicago media is as pliant and bending-of-will as all 50 endangered Chicago aldermen.
The endgame is the shrinking of Chicago from a city of neighborhoods to an Urban Center - when the population leaves the neighborhoods due to crime, poverty, poor city services and schools, there in lies the opportunity to smart-size everything down to an urban center - green open-spaces for walking,biking, capering, stolling, mincing and hand-holding among the magnificent gardens and tree-scapes, great non-smelly public transportation to and from business to townhouse, condo, loft, rehabilitated stone crafted buildings, entertainment, and life-style happy venues. Not a beer-belly in sight!
This will be a pricey Urban Center and it already happens to be, but if one can afford such a Utopia, and the better folks certainly will, who cares? We get Blue Recycling Dumpsters! Finally!
Though the costs for city crews to pick up recycling are still greater than 50 cents more per bin than Waste Management and Metal Management Midwest, Emanuel left open the possibility that he will continue to split recycling duties in Chicago between public and private crews for the foreseeable future.
"What will happen, every six months (Streets and Sanitation Commissioner) Tom (Byrne) and his team will evaluate this, and then at one point, if somebody brings down the price even further, we'll rip that band-aid off," Emanuel said. "That's why I want to keep competition in place."
Following this swell trade off of neighborhood autonomy by the aldermen we elected, the guys on the Blue Trucks will smarten up their CVs. Mick, Steve, Hector, Swede, Sticky, Madison and Headsy will no longer manage our waste, plow our streets of snow, trim our parkway trees, or fix the sewer lines 35 ft. from our ejector lines.
They will have sold their Raised Ranches Cape Cods and Georgians and moved on to Peotone, Manhattan, and Custer Park swelling the populations of Will and Kankakee Counties, because Waste Management and Metal Management will have smart sized Streets and Sanitation into an exhibit at the Field Museum.
The Chicago Phonebook will now be found in the Lists provided by Craine's Chicago Business -Top CEO's, Top Lawyers, Top Doctors, Top Community Activists, Top Donors Forum 500, Top Sports Figures, Top Billies - Corgan and Dec.
I imagine, cynical old bastard I be, that Waste Management and Metal Management have already made a verbal, or at least a twitched, agreement to bundle the Rahm 2016 Presidential Campaign. How could I even think that?
The two private firms have served roughly half of the 241,000 Chicago households already in the recycling program and the city has handled the rest.
History.
Once Ward Autonomy is gone as political and historical memory, the neighbors and breeders can just bugger off and like it.
* From the Tribune articles comments - Reads like David Axelrod parade of Grassrooters:
Thank you Mayor Emanuel for the hard work on this important service. Besides saving millions of tons of recyclabe waste form landfills when children in families get used to recycling in the bin it sets a mind for life on environmental mindfulness. We win in so many ways.
Privatize the entire operation. It will be cheaper. Wast Mangement picks up my recycling. One person is on the truck and he does everyting. The city has 2-3 on a truck. Waste Management drivers make less than the political hack city drivers and no pension costs. The the bankrupt city can lay off the policital hacks and save a lot of money. They will probably be moved to other job with higher pay and less work.
When will the city change regular trash pick from a ward by ward map to a grid system that could save the cuty $30 million a year?? The mayor is always crying that the city is strapped for cash, here is a simple solution that is easy to impliment that saves millions
This is the Jewel in this Crown of Thorns!
speaker, we can't have random people coming into the ward yards. they could trip and fall, get hurt and sue the city.
on the other hand, what a great idea for oh, waht 6 - 8 more ward jobs. good union men to assist the citizens of our wards with their recycling. this assistance given as a distraction so ya don't notice the 15 - 20 union city employees sitting around playing cards, bbq'ing, have a few beers with the game on tv.
