The Sun has a good Chris Scott article today on the now-projected $6M budget deficit the city faces:
The city’s projected budget deficit for next year has nearly doubled from an estimated $3.6 million in early April to about $6 million today, a jump City Manager Bernie Lynch attributes primarily to departmental “wish lists” that aren’t based in fiscal reality.
Interesting, concerning, though seemingly, something we might be able to work carefully to reduce.
However, later in the article, Scott writes about the trash budget deficit:
A growing gap between trash revenue and trash expenditures. City residents pay $100 annually for trash pickup. Last year, that generated nearly $3 million. The bill to the city, however, is closer to $6 million.
This is half of this projected budget deficit, and if addressed fully, would mean less cuts elsewhere. You can bet Lynch has his eye on it.
Of course, merely increasing our yearly fee for trash pickup would go a long way towards alleviating the deficit, but it’s not enough. I think we could even avoid raising the fee entirely if we completely reassess how trash collection works in Lowell.
First up, no other local community just picks up everything people put out. No town I’ve ever lived in ever did it. Couches and big items cost extra in other communities, but here, for just $100 per year, anything goes. That is not a reasonable expectation for service in my opinion. There is some anecdotal evidence that non-residents from surrounding communities are dumping large items on our streets because they save money, and know we pick it up. That costs the city money beyond even what we residents demand, though it’s hard to know by how much. Even though I love the convenience of full trash pickup and have taken advantage of it every single time I’ve moved, I knew that it was a matter of time before it was deemed untenable. I think now is that time.
Far from a pay-for-throw system, which I think we should seriously consider, merely having to buy stickers for large bulky items instead of getting them taken away free (or rather, as part of the basic fee) would go a ways towards closing the gap, and might be a good first step to bringing our trash services in line to reasonable expectations.
Then there’s that recycling situation. Because there’s not enough buy-in from residents on recycling, the program costs the city instead of saves it money. There are so many great ideas for improving participation, and most don’t require too much money. A slate of volunteers, maybe a twice-yearly “Recycling Day” wherein the volunteers and city employees make themselves available in various neighborhoods to give out the bins and educate residents on what can and cannot be recycled would be a start. A couple of tens of thousands in investment for an outreach program could yield hundreds of thousands in savings in our trash services. I bet there’s even a state or federal grant to run such a program.
You can’t talk upping the recycling participation, though, until you at least consider pay-for-throw, or even just limitations on the number of trash bags per family per week. In pay-for-throw, residents would have to buy special bags for a little more than they are paying for generic ones, in order for their trash to be taken away. Those bags would be available at every grocery store and other retail locations in the area. The incentive to recycle then becomes a monetary one, as families try to decrease their waste stream and spend less on the special bags
You could also mandate recycling that way. In some pay-for-throw programs, those specially-bought bags are clear, so the trash inside is visible to the sanitation worker. With clear bags, the sanitation workers could spot recyclables in the trash and refuse to pick up that bag, leaving a note indicating why the bag was refused. Personally, I’m all for this method. The city saves tons of money, and maybe we obtain a recycling participation rate to be envied the world over.
What you would then do is reduce or eliminate the yearly fee in favor of the per-bag and per-bulky-item prices we would pay. An adept recycler might be able to actually make out ahead of the deal, using less than $100 per year in trash bags and stickers. My household, with recycling and composting, averages maybe a bag a week. At, say, a $1 a bag, that’s certainly less than 100 bags a year, while the city makes up the difference by making money on the amount of recyclables I’ve not thrown in the trash. You can also reduce your waste stream by buying food or items that are not overpackaged, using canvass bags for all your shopping, not just groceries, giving away clothing and goods that are still serviceable, among other trash-saving tips.
Imagine how exciting it would be if we just took some time to redesign how we live, just a little bit.
Someone unearthed this vintage footage of O’Reilly on an old show, trying to do a taped take. His very uncool reaction (warning, some pretty bad swearing) really gives you a sense of the man - and his way of dealing with problems. It’s too bad he doesn’t do this live on FOX - oh wait…
Just something to amuse and shock you on this Monday noontime. Might make you nauseous if taken with food. 
A couple items of interest on tomorrow night’s agenda. First, under Unfinished Business, the Cultural Office vote is coming up again, having been postponed until Bernie came back. It should pass this time (it needs 6 votes), as all cronies have been reassured that their feathered nests - er, I mean, respective entities - are safe from being held to account.
I’ll be honest - I’d really like to know what the city gets for its $100,000 budget line item for the Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, and why other cities and towns in the area don’t give it any money, just us. Did the other cities and towns find they weren’t getting their money’s worth? If so, why are we such suckers? But that is a battle for another time.
I’d also like to see a reexamination of bids for the other two “nesting” entities that were up in arms over the elevation of a city Cultural Office. The Memorial Auditorium’s management company contract had been extended, no-bid, for, if I recall, five years, two years before the contract was due to expire (this was, of course, under Cox). How Cheneyesque. I wonder if there’s recourse for opening that up to bid (like, was it illegal under the Massachusetts General Laws to extend that contract without getting bids?). I mean, it could very well be that the management companies that run the Auditorium, and the one that manages the Arena, too, are doing the best job that can be expected. Then again, how do we know?
I expect to see progress and transparency on these other issues at some point, though it has nothing to do with the Cultural Office vote, and never did. It boggles the mind why this vote became entangled in these other issues - guilty conscience perhaps?
Also under Unfinished Business but on the other side of the coin from creating an office to centralize our cultural economy, is the vote to reduce the burden of governing (aka “hard work”) on the poor, put-upon City Councilors. It would have the Council meet every second and fourth Tuesdays of the month (so in rare months where there’s a fifth Tuesday, there’d be three weeks between meetings, like in July ‘08). Not only that, but this rules change also moves the start time for these meetings to 7pm. This would be, I expect, so they can jam in a couple of sub committee meetings before, and get it all done in one night.
So, a later start time for twice the work, presumably. Now, I’m as big a Bernie supporter as they come, but the Council’s most important job is overseeing the office of the City Manager. Hey, I wish to hell that back in my Cubical Land days, my bosses only bothered to oversee me every other week, but I don’t think that it’s good for the city. I urge any city councilor who cares about their job to vote against this rules change. Lowell is a city, with many issues to attend to, it can’t be governed twice a month on every other Tuesday like a garden club. I would say that, if anything, the Council needs to meet more often, not less.
If this passes, then I want a councilor paycut. You do half the job, you should get half the pay. It’s only fair, and the city’s in a tight budget situation. Be a patriot, and either shoot this ridiculous and whiny motion down or else give us back the money we spend on your salaries. Yeesh.
Everyone paying attention knows about McCain’s pandering to Hagee, though you’d never know it from the mainstream media, which largely ignored it. However, sucking up to crazy far right wing preachers appears to be an integral part of McCain’s strategy:
Edit: Update on Hagee: He reneges his “Katrina happened because NOLA was a bunch of sinners” comment, only to say it again. What an upstanding guy he is! Has McCain rejected his endorsement yet?
Employees at Lifelinks, Inc, a Lowell and Chelmsford group that provides care to those with developmental disabilities via both day and residential programs, will go on a one-day strike on Monday. Strikers are demanding better wages and training. They cite high turnover as detrimental to the clients of Lifelinks, and the average paycheck is just around $11 an hour, which if you ask me, accounts for the turnover in employees.
From the statement of the employees, via SEIU Local 509:
We are even willing to tie our paychecks to training, but the company has rejected our proposals. Our average wage is little over $11.00 per hour. Many of us must work 2-3 jobs to support our own families. Management of the company has rejected these common sense ideas and has insisted on numerous take backs from the employees.
“We want better training, and we’re willing to tie our paychecks to better training, but the company keeps saying no,” according to Agnes Irungu, a direct care worker at LifeLinks who assists developmentally disabled people. “Our clients deserve better than they are getting and we’re willing to fight to make sure they get it.”
These are not “mere” service jobs, like cleaning houses (for which $11/hour is not a living wage either). This is human services, which requires skills, caring, and trusted employees. There is no way to argue that paying $11/hour for these jobs is helping anyone, least of all the clients.
From the statement again:
The decision to strike is not one that we take lightly; unfortunately we feel we are being forced into an unacceptable situation. All of us care deeply about the individuals we serve. We have been working hard to improve turnover and the quality of care not just at