Welcome To New Philadelphia: The City Built On Fees That No One Will Ever, Ever Pay
And it’s here that we must step in and speak directly with City Hall: Are you people fucking retarded? Let us consider, for a moment, what would really happen if you started charging people $5 a week to collect the trash: On each block, there would be people, proud and righteous and civic-minded people, of course, who would pay the fee. Then, there’d be everybody else, who would not. The result? Neighbor-against-neighbor acrimony (and sometimes, violence), when it came to pass that non-paying neighbors would be stepping over themselves to discretely (or not discretely) place their trash on paying neighbors’ stoops. This is Philadelphia. This is how we roll. This is not going to change. And now, you’re going to try and charge convicted felons for the honor of being locked into a Philadelphia jail? What? Let us know how that works out for you.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Not to mention just throwing it in a vacant lot. There will be plenty of that.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
who needs a sanitation department when we’ve got all those lovely empty lots and sewer drains?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
As with the biweekly trash collection idea that was considered/voiced the other week, the city’s rats wholeheartedly endorse this fee. I’d love to see a mocked up Onion photo with a rat lobbyist in a suit.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Sigh. Oh, just… sigh. And they were on such a good start with better recycling pick up, too.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Pay as you throw works in many other cities, and much as we like to think it, Philadelphia is not so unlike other cities.
The problem is not that people would put trash in front of their neighbors house- they get around that problem in a variety of ways from using special bags or tags- but the short dumping problem is the real issue.
On the other hand, recycling would remain free- and 50% of your trash is recycling, so it incentivize recycling.
I’m not saying I love the idea, or that there aren’t serious potential side-effects, but it’s worth considering.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Whatever happened to raising taxes instead of introducing regressive fees?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Or, better yet, collecting the millions upon millions of taxes levied and never paid?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Government on every level is broken. It has become a cancer that is sucking the life out of this country. Nobama, the great savior is proving himself to be just another hack politician. The stimulus package is pork barrel spending crafted by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barney Frank,the very scumbags who created the crisis.
California, the great leftist paradise is going tits up and across the country, government everywhere is failing.
Vote Democrat and this is what you get
You have empowered communists so live with your decision comrades
February 19th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
California’s governor is a Republican, you boob.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
OMG. our house is next to the backyards and alley of the block perpendicular. many of our neighbors already put trash out in front of our house… so who pays then?
there has been an old mattress a few blocks over from our house for about.. i don’t know… 3 months now…
:\
February 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
The whole subprime mess started in Orange County, a Republican stronghold, and then made worse by Wall Street, (also largely Reublican,) where they commodified the bad loans.
http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2009/02/12/listen-why-oc-is-ground-zero-of-housing-mess/14669/
February 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
sorry for the typo.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
friendlynerd Says:
Or, better yet, collecting the millions upon millions of taxes levied and never paid?
Thats a GREAT idea-the Eagles owe a few million…that should be enough to keep us from wallowing in our own squalor.
February 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
philly is unlike other cities though: we employ way more people as a pctg of our population and we pay them better. bringing them back down to earth (see other major city comp info…chicago, nyc, etc) in compensation will deliver 5$ per household a lot faster than trying to collect for garbage pickup. blerg.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I live in a 21 story condo, the City doesn’t pick up our trash even though the Pa Supreme Ct ordered them too. We pay about $80,000 yrly to have a private company pick it up. I wonder if they make the tax abatement bldgs do that too?
February 19th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
The City should charge prisoners just prior (and as a condition of) release, not when the prisoners are initially locked up. This would provide an actual incentive for payment.
February 19th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Philadelphians have such a strange relationship with trash. These comments could have been ripped from Philly.com, and that’s not a good thing.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Timo Says:
February 19th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
California’s governor is a Republican, you boob.
Yeah, he’s a Republican(insert mocking laugh here) Schwartzie is to the left of Lenin how else would he have gotten elected in the land of fruitcakes?
February 19th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Timo Says:
February 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
The whole subprime mess started in Orange County, a Republican stronghold, and then made worse by Wall Street, (also largely Reublican,) where they commodified the bad loans.
Look no further than Barney takesituptheass Franks and his cohorts ramming the Fannie/Freddie disaster down everyones throats. Wall Street simply said “when you get handed lemons,make lemonade”
February 19th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Homophobia now, jburnside? Wow, look at you.
February 20th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Hey, burnside, you should try taking it up the ass sometime. It might dislodge the hateful dead thing inside that makes you spew such bile in places you’re clearly not wanted.
February 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
This is an over-reaction over a mere proposal. Good ideas often evolve out of tossing around every idea you have. Everyone wants government to start thinking of news ways to reform but it seems more important to most to yell and scream about anything that isn’t exactly what they’re used to, and then yell and scream about that, too.
February 21st, 2009 at 1:59 am
Burnside is off base and I think there’s more to consider. If we all pay $5 a month then at least that’s like paying for the service vs. now we’re not. You roll it up in the water bill by the way so they can shut off water if you don’t pay for trash since its a line item. At least that’s how other parts of the country I’ve lived do it. And, trash usually costs about $10-$20 a month elsewhere, so if the city is going bankrupt needs to get a fee in this nature why not. Would you rather they jack up the parking ticket fines or the wage tax??? City’s gotta pay its bills, and they’re not.
And, by the way, ‘elect a Democrat and have a shot at cleaning up the mess of the lesser half of America, the Republicans (or should I say the lesser 25% nowadays)’…