Illinois nanny city now requiring $50 trash cans

Fox News ^ | 9-11-13 | watchdog.org

[IL Republican]

The City of Bloomington, which thinks it knows how to run taxi cabs and when you should mow your lawn, now knows better than you how big your trash can should be.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/11/illinois-nanny-city-now-requiring-50-trash-cans/?test=latestnews#ixzz2ebbrWW8V

[IL Republican]

I live in Normal, which is right next door. We have mandatory trash cans as well, but our dear leaders bought ours for us!

[GraceG]

Simple solution, only have your neighbor sign up for the service, and pay him under the table, enough people do this and the beast will be starved!

[al baby]

With your tax money sucka

[GraceG]

“The city looked at best practices and safe work conditions for the employees and made the choice to go with (automated collections),”

Wow sounds like SEIU was involved in this...

Can’t have the trash men working for a living...

[bgill]

That’s what my neighbor does.

The cost of the big trash cans are included in our monthly bills. Been that way for more than a decade.

[Don Corleone]

“The city looked at best practices and safe work conditions for the employees and made the choice to go with (automated collections),”

Wow sounds like SEIU was involved in this...

Can’t have the trash men working for a living...

The Cancer that is Chicago is metastasizing downstate!!

[Buckeye McFrog]

We have mandatory trash cans as well, but our dear leaders bought ours for us!

Your tax dollars going for trash cans supplied by some offshoot of the Soprano crew at 6000% markup, to be laundered right back into Your Local Democrat Party. What a scam!

[ConservativeStatement]

Good thing Henry Blake isn’t around to see this.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Can’t have the trash men working for a living...

There was an infamous City Council meeting here in Pittsburgh years ago that was telecast live on cable. The head of the trash collectors' union was arguing for this same thing. He cited one of his members, who was on disability with a bad back. He said the job had "destroyed his marriage by ruining his sex life". When pressed to explain by a member of Council he became agitated and shot back, "Because when your back goes out, you don't f***!"

Must See TV remembered by many Pittsburghers all these years later.

[AnalogReigns]

Since modern trash-collection trucks use an hydraulic arm to lift and dump trash bins into them--which therefore have to be a uniform, large size (usually with wheels), this is kind of a non-story. Since this dumpster-style trash collection is superior in nearly all ways--safer, faster, fewer employees, one large trash can in stead of several, it's got wheels so anyone can take the trash out......practically all municipalities around the country are using it.

Getting people to directly pay for their bins too, isn't a bad idea--as I bet fewer bins are damaged or abused that way.....

Public sanitation including trash collection is one legitimate area of government--not constituting a "nanny state."

Now in Charlotte, NC, there WAS a program (quashed due to public outcry) that put a computer chip into recycling bins...in order to monitor if they were being used.... Now THAT for sure is different....and DEFINITELY nanny-statism, and in fact totalitarian.

Just shows how easily something as basic and normal as trash-collection can become--in the wrong government hands...totalitarian and tyrannical.

[AnalogReigns]

I’d be willing to bet that communities that give residents “free” trash bins (such as my own) pay a LOT more than $50 a piece for them....with that profit going into political favorites’ pockets.

Actually $50 for a large wheeled trash bin would have to be a wholesale price, as I’m sure retail is much pricier than that.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I live in Normal, which is right next door. We have mandatory trash cans as well, but our dear leaders bought ours for us!

Did they take second jobs waiting tables and delivering newspapers? Cause if the used taxpayer money, you were forced to pay for them, for yourself and everyone else.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

We have them in my city, provided by the sanitation department, which retains ownership. I’ll say this—they have a life expectancy, and eventually the claws on the trucks, yanking them up and down, combined with weathering, do cause damage. Lid hinges break, plastic cracks, wheels fall off. I fill out a from online and a week or two later a van comes, takes the broken one and drops off a new one. No additional charge.

[Boogieman]

Yeah, these bins are everywhere, I don’t see how this is news. I guess to people who live in rural areas, it seems unusual, but just about everywhere else, it is par for the course.

[PeteB570]

Fayetteville, NC has similar service. Uniform Trash, Lawn Waste and Recycle bins. Replaced by the city when broken.

The only sore point is the recycle bins are half as large as the trash and lawn waste bins. If you want the larger size you have to buy it.

Which means once the recycle bin is full all the rest of the recycle goes into the trash bin. Oh, well.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Since modern trash-collection trucks use an hydraulic arm to lift and dump trash bins into them--which therefore have to be a uniform, large size (usually with wheels), this is kind of a non-story. Since this dumpster-style trash collection is superior in nearly all ways--safer, faster, fewer employees, one large trash can in stead of several, it's got wheels so anyone can take the trash out......practically all municipalities around the country are using it.

It's also fantastic for vermin control. My city put this system in place more than a decade ago, and it's worked well. The initial receptacle is paid for by the city; if you want extra ones you pay for them yourself.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Read the article. The city manager is trying to cut costs and had considered privatizing trash collection. The union objected to that and the city council caved, so now they're doing this, which will cut the number of drivers needed, since a truck only requires one and he doesn't need to ever get out, saving time. Look for the union to scream.

I think the "safe working conditions" line is hiding something, too. I'll bet that the most common cause of injuries--real or not--for trash collectors is falls getting in and out of the truck. That leads to lost time and disability payments for the city.

[DannyTN]

Usually when trash cans have to be uniform, it’s to support some form of automated pickup.

A $50 one time fee is probably a lot better than bumping your service $5/month and 3 years later you could have bought 3 trashcans.

[WinMod70]

” I guess to people who live in rural areas, it seems unusual...” There’s a lot of stuff I find unusual that city folk accept and put up with. Ever since they put the damper on emptying chamber pots along the street things have gone down hill.

[napscoordinator]

We in Annapolis, Maryland all have the same exact trash cans but they give them to us. We don’t pay for them (except through property taxes I guess).