For Christ’s Sake Department….

I have to tell you that here in Peoria, everything is hard.  At least to our city council, everything has to be brain surgery like garbage collection.  It seems though that the brains go missing when it comes to offering up bonds for new hotels, making TIFs, inventing new fees like the now famous HIZ tax (Hospitality Improvement Zone)  which is an added 1% sales tax for downtown businesses so we can give money to a developer, who can’t get money for his project via a bank. When it comes to basic services like garbage collection, the council’s brains kick in overtime.

It is really simple.  Garbage collection in Peoria has been bid and included with our property taxes for years. Now, in an effort to save us money, our council is looking into ways to maybe have pay as you go type collection of garbage.  Eliminating alley collections and making everyone move their garbage to the curb.  Some talk includes maybe renting special cans from the disposal company, limiting maybe one can per household thus creating recycling opportunities and on and on it goes.  Brain surgery.

First, in older parts of Peoria where alleys still exist, garbage must stay in the alleys.  That is where the trash is and in my part of Peoria, some alleys are in better shape than the streets and a lot of the streets here in the deep south don’t even have curbs.  Besides, I use Nimmo Hardware on Starr Street.  You park in the back via the alley and I’ll tell you that alley is in better shape than Starr Street.

Second, If you pay as you go, well then the trash will stack up, businesses will find that a midnight depositor has left bags of garbage in their dumpsters and trash will collect behind houses because the common basic renter in the deep south here thinks garbage collection is FREE. Even at that price, many here are too fucking lazy to haul garbage out on Friday (our collection day) and it mounts up behind houses.  Think not?  OK, check with Kroger’s at Madison Park.  They have installed 5 security cameras in the back of Madison Park shopping center all aimed at the various business dumpsters  Why? Because people living in nearby Limestone and Bellevue, which has no common garbage collection, (you must pay a service) dump their garbage in those dumpsters and those businesses are tired of paying for that.  So they have locked their dumpsters and put cameras on them.  Same with Family Video on Harmon Hwy. 

Check Kickapoo Creek Road between Bartonville and Farmington Rd.  If you look, almost daily you’ll see someone has thrown their garbage bags into the ditch.  So it happens and if you think this won’t get worse in Peoria with a pay as you go garbage collection, well you’re wrong.

Like I said, people who live in the older parts of Peoria where rental homes are abundant, can’t even get their garbage out once a week where it’s “free”. Think they’ll pay and do it when it’s not?  “Let’s see, I need my weed, my malt liquor and my beer, fuck the garbage!”   The only way these people will pay for garbage pickup is if Waste Management accepts Link Cards. That’s doubtful.

I can show you houses right now that have more than 2 weeks worth of garbage stacked behind their house now.  Why?  Because the landlord doesn’t provide garbage cans or they simply won’t buy them.  It’s easier to simply throw the bag out back.  Out of sight out of mind.  Much like our Council seems to handle our tax money.  

Why do you think there is a rat problem in Peoria?  Clean streets and alleys?  Yeah, rats love clean streets.  Hell the rats I’ve seen are the cleanest rats ever.  Even saw one with a gold neck chain once.  Zoning doesn’t see this because up until recently, our zoning guy doesn’t get out of the car to check, unless it’s Churches Fried Chicken.  There, you’ll find him standing.  I will admit that we may have a new zoning enforcement officer in our area because I have seen him actually get out and look over a property.  Twice!  Bet you don’t see that in Lynhurst.

Recycling.  Again, this is good idea and those people who think so already recycle. I do some but it is limited. Maybe forcing recycling by using bins for collections would work better but again, this is the south side (I’m sure the East Bluff and North end have the same problems) and people who rent (most of them) don’t give a rat’s ass about sorting their garbage.  To them, sorting their garbage is throwing out their McDonald’s Big Mac wrappers as they turn the corner and holding on to their drink cup for a few more blocks before heaving that too.

That is recycling in my neighborhood and now the city council is making a huge debate on garbage collection which really amounts to this: Not how they can make it convenient to Peorians and encourage recycling, etc etc, but how they can get it done cheaply to cut the deficit, which they themselves created by offering up Museums, TIFs that didn’t work (RIP Ren-Park) and how they can generate yet another fee, like the Garbage Fee to cover years of incompetent spending on things we really didn’t need, like ornamental lighting (drug dealers need to see at night), arbors (Lord knows how an arbor attracts……Bradley), hanging flower baskets (yes, even our elite’s kids need summer jobs at the Park District), and new logo’s (We paid for Illinois American Water’s new logo via the $88 grand a year we pay them to collect the Garbage Fee).   

City Council!  Keep it simple.  Bid out for universal pickup.  Don’t omit alleys and mandate curb pickup.  Don’t allow the bidding company to force their garbage rental cans on us.  The garbage companies do this for profit and anything that makes it quicker and uses less man hours is more money for them and they will tell you garbage smells like roses to get to that end.  In other words, keep the status quo in Peoria on garbage pickup.  Concentrate on cancelling some of the bells and whistles for now, like giving $40 million for a new hotel and then having the gall to make business, including competing hotels pay and extra sales tax (read HIZ)  for it thus driving even more business away.  If it’s a great deal, then the developer will get the private funding they need.

If all this means raising the sales tax or heaven forbid, the property taxes, then do it.  BASIC CITY SERVICES FIRST!  The property taxes go up every year anyway what with the multiplier and property value increases.  Mine has never went down.  Businesses in outer Peoria were charging that extra 1% and they weren’t supposed too, but no one complained until CJ wrote about it. So raise the tax one or two cents?  But don’t fuck with something as necessary and simple as garbage collection!

I know, maybe if a lot of people showed up to a city council meeting each with a bag of smelly garbage, maybe our council would remember what it’s like to live next door to a moron that won’t take their garbage out to the curb for “free” pickup once a week.  Then, when the meeting is over, leave the garbage so they can get a sense of how unfair the Garbage Fee is (OK, that’s a reach, I’ll admit it) but sometimes smelling is believing.