San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is desperate to catch up with Fresno, it appears. He's proposing a system of garbage police to cite residents of the city who fail to separate their garbage correctly. The binbusters would poke through the refuse, and issue citations for up to $1,000 to garbage miscreants.
It's similar -- though not as expensive -- to the system that's been in place in Fresno for some time. And it's causing a few chuckles hereabouts at the expense of sophisticated, cosmopolitan, urbane San Franciscans who don't know food waste from scrap paper from plant clippings.
Yo, Gav -- come on down. We'll show you how it's done.
...I thought those guys digging in my can every week WERE the garbage police, what on earth could they be doing?
The other day I saw a City employee driving down the wrong side of our street in a full-sized pickup lifting garbage can lids (without bothering to get out of his truck). This just seemed wrong on so many levels - the waste of gasoline and added pollution, the flagrant violation of the Vehicle Code, and the poor example of our "do as we say and not as we do" local government (and no, we didn't get cited, so I'm not just another "disgruntled citizen").
Maybe with those thousand-dollar fines, they can at least afford to employ some energy-efficient vehicles to harass the citizenry in S.F.
Typical liberal...raise taxes, add fees and penalties, and over-regulate so government imposes into every facet of your life.
This regulation seems especially grevious against property owners, since a garbage can is placed on the street/alley where anyone can throw refuge into it. What's in the can may or may not have been placed their by the property owner to which it is assigned. So how can the property owner be fined for violations?
"Typical liberal"? Like our own "liberal" City Council who have already enacted such an ordinance? (With "typical liberals" like Larry Westerlund leading the way.)