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.

Just something to amuse and shock you on this Monday noontime. Might make you nauseous if taken with food.

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.

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?

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 Lifelinks, Inc. but in the Human Services field in general. The company is rejecting common sense contract language that will not cost them a cent, allow the company to access new state revenue and improve training at our agency. In addition management wants to reduce leave time and reduce job security for many staff at the agency.

The 24-hour strike begins at 7:00 am on Monday, May 12, with a rally at 12 noon at 55 Middlesex Street. If anyone has any questions, they can call Cliff Cohn at 617-924-8509 x530.

Just, please don’t make us go through this again. I hope this quote is pulled out of proportion in this article.

(Hat tip, Political Inaction at BMG.)

I bet those voters, if they existed in enough numbers to put Clinton over the top in IN, certainly counted. I know most other ones don’t seem to…

On another note, Clinton lost the nomination. Again. She maybe gained +one delegate in IN, but is behind around 13 in NC. Then, the math. The math. The math. With Obama pulling in ratios of between 2 to 5 superdelegates to every one for Clinton these days, it’s over. Apparently everyone but Clinton knows it. (We all knew it months ago, but the media lapped up the comeback kid storyline. But, even they have given that up.)

Now, it’s about her legacy, bowing out graciously. Will she come around and stand behind the guy who won, fair and square, and who is our best chance for winning in November? Or will she continue to torpedo him until the only conclusion you can make it that she’s trying to get him to lose in November so she can run again in 2012?

Enough. Yes, the extended primary process had some good points. But we need to turn this ship around to a new horizon, that of McCain the Bush-Kissing Flipflopper who is good with the US perpetrating torture.

Edit: You know, I really did fix the spelling error in the title, or thought I did, before posting. Gotta love the internets…

Sign our petition for election reform in Massachusetts

Help young and lower-income citizens vote. Stand up and be counted in the petition to Senator Murray.

This year’s most progressive voting reform has almost made it through the Massachusetts legislature. Thanks in large part to pressure from Citizen Activists like you, the Election Day Registration bill may soon become law. But one more hurdle stands in its way.

If you believe in helping young and lower-income citizens vote, stand up and be counted with the Election Day Registration petition.

Election Day Registration would allow an estimated 225,000 more people to vote in Massachusetts elections—a 5% increase. It does this by letting eligible citizens register and vote on Election Day, instead of losing their right to vote if they miss the registration cutoff. Young and lower-income citizens benefit most, since they are often new to the political process or more likely to move around and miss registration deadlines. We always talk about encouraging civic participation among these groups; this is a chance to do something positive about it!

Sen. Therese Murray, the president of the State Senate, now controls the fate of the Election Day Registration bill. She can call for a vote on the bill, or she can effectively kill it by doing nothing. The Governor says he’ll sign the bill, and grassroots lobbying by folks like you has already won over House leadership. Now we need to get over the last hump, by convincing Sen. Murray that she should allow an up-or-down vote on Election Day Registration.

If you want to be counted as a supporter of progressive election reform, sign the petition to Sen. Murray today.

A citizen delegation, organized by our allies at MassVOTE, will hand-deliver this petition to Sen. Murray next week. If you feel strongly about election reform, you are warmly invited to join the delegation. Email or call Luisa Peña at MassVOTE, lpena@massvote.org, 617-542-8683 x205.

Not surprising the media fails to cover its own complicities in this matter. They love their “access” and don’t question the source. The precedent this sets - such large scale war propaganda on American soil - could change our democracy forever. From Kerry:

The Pentagon now says that it has suspended this program, but we still don’t know what really happened. What was the extent of the program? Did the Pentagon leverage the financial interests of the analysts? And, especially, now that the Pentagon has announced this program has been suspended, what steps are being taken to make sure it never happens again?

We know the life-or-death consequences of policy decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan — and we know that these policies should de debated and defended without secret programs designed to tailor the news for the Administration’s goals. This is too important to brush aside.

So I sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking for that independent office to conduct a full investigation of this program and report its findings. But what we need to do is show that the people are watching this. I sent out an email yesterday to the johnkerry.com community asking everyone who agrees with me to sign on as co-signers to the letter I sent to the GAO.

I ask all of you here to join me as well.

Click here, read the letter I sent to the GAO, and add your voice to those of us who are demanding answers.

Somebody needs to hold the administration and the media to account. The independent GAO is known for its investigations into serious matters. I think this is a good move on the Senator’s part.

Chris Scott did what all good reporters should do; seek the news and report on it. However, the SC should stop this charade of meeting behind close doors to discuss personnel issues and then take no action against one of their own who is so eager to make that call to the Sun.

And as for the SC’s decision, not much of a surprise, the deals sounds like a compromise took place. Scott writes: “…the School Committee voted unanimously in executive session to strip the sick-day buyback portion of her severance package — which originally stood at $50,000. Baehr will still be compensated for 39 1/2 vacation days for a total of $26,921. She’ll lose, however, nearly $24,000, which represented the sick-time buyback portion of the severance package.”