Garbage (Part 3)
July 10th, 2007
I would like to thank PHA (Peoria Housing Authority) for making my back alley behind my very nice property in the Cottage District a dump.
And yes everyone, you can clearly see they are PDC dumpsters. Guess who’s dumpters? Why yes, PHA’s Dumptsers. PHA has four buildings right behind my property in the 900 block of Orange. (The good side) Everytime I cut my grass back there, I have to spend time picking up broken beer bottles and all the garbage PDC won’t pick up, and PHA residents litter on my lawn.
OK, I’ll admit, I’m sick of the trash being dumped in the alleys and in the streets of Peoria. Solution: I hope someone from the Council reads this. Right now you are collecting a $6.00 fee to subsidize garbage pick up. Why don’t you starting imposing heavy fines on buinsess, and companies that don’t clean up after themselves. Take the $6.00 fee and redirect that into efforts to start picking up the damn garbage in our city? i.e more code enforcement employees, and start working with property owners. Have you ever walked down Main Street after a weekend? Trash. Broken glass, ciggarette butts everywhere. Start imposing fines to busineness that can’t clean up in front of their place, and you will see the litter go away, and an increase in the City Budget.
Start imposing heaving fines to PHA. Do YOU HEAR ME. PHA is one of the worst and filthiest landords in the City, Country, Planet, Galaxy. Start holding them accountable for the trash. Maybe it will/should take a citizen to sue for devaluation of property due to trash PHA let’s their tenants throw around our neighborhoods. Fix the trash proplem in the Alleys and you will probaly save money in RAT control. Not to mention how unsanitary it is.
My point is this. How can the City justify building anymore tourist attractions, or places for them to stay (i.e New Hotel) when our city looks like a dump. All this development on the Riverfront is suppost to attract potential urban renewal. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Who wants to walk downtown and see garbage, or drive through our neighborhoods and see dumpsters with trash all over the place? All that money wasted on new garbage cans and Peoria Disposal, Waste Management, and Code Enforcement can’t work together. Impose a Litter Tax/Fine.
Summary. Impose fines on PHA, PDC, Waste Management. If they can’t doing a better job, make them pay. Work with Property owners on trash problem. Impose Litter TAX/Fine. Redirect the damn Garbage Tax and do something constructive with it. Time to take my blood pressure medication.
Technorati Tags: Peoria Disposal, Waste Management, City of Peoria, Code Enforcement, Litter Tax
July 10th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Now you know that you don’t go and pick all of that garbage up. You know that you make me go out and pick up the trash. haha Sorry that I’m slacking.
July 11th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Yes those are PDC dumpsters and yes I hope someone on the council reads this post and NO the garbage fee DOES NOT GO TO GARBAGE COLLECTION. It is just called a garbage fee and it goes to fund police and fire. Go figure. Ironicly, the fee should also help with city services but hey, this is Peoria where very little makes sense in government.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
The PHA probably has some form of immunity from lawsuits….Government agencies are the worst to deal with as they usually send out their goons to intimidate people into silence.
July 16th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
YES! I can’t agree more. I drive around this city and am amazed at the trash and weeds. I just got back from Ohio, with a stop in Indianapolis and was amazed at how well kept these places were. Even Cleveland was tiddy.
This city needs to do a better job of getting business owners or landlords to clean up their places.
Knoxville is the gateway to Peoria and I have to say, I would be pretty unimpressed if I was new in town and entered this way. That old hotel/apartment building on the right as you exit 74 is the pits and then you travel on to see empty lots, trash laden guttters, and weed infested sidewalks. It really is a bad first impression. I realize this city has bigger problems, but lets at least make it look like we’re a lot like Mayberry.
July 17th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
scott,
wanted to get back to you. We have discussed the issues regarding garbage from your blog at two litter committee meetings. Due to holiday we cancelled the one sceduled the first tuesday in July.
Some of this I put into Billy’s blog about looking at the problem from a comprehensive viewpoint. We are trying to accomplish our mission in two ways, one reactive through clean ups and other types of initiatives, one through proactive, which would include education, enforcement, strategic placement of cans and so on. In looking at the items mentioned here, without knowing the exact causes of the trash being on the ground in the various posts, (eg” wind, animals, people throwing it themselves, something stuck to the bottom of the can then when turned over comes loose and drops to the ground etc., we discussed the variety of possibilities and then are working on solutions for those. I suggested today that when we recieve information from sources such as this, or complaints directed to the committee, that we start compiling potential solutions onto our website in the hopes that others who have similiar issues have a resource or ideas on how to correct the situation themselves. Some may be common sense, some may be things many of us never thought of before. Most problems with litter are completely correctable by the person themselves, (eg: don’t throw it on the ground, when putting out trash put it into bags and then in tightly sealed containers or toter-styled garbage cans, pick up any trash which may blow in the yard.) Other problems require resources, such as sponsorships of neighborhood garbage recepticles placed in areas around businesses where customers are going to generate trash.
Waste Management is aware of the concerns and is addressing issues and concerns from their end. They also stated they would be glad to address issues directly.
Hopefully this does not sound like “fluff” to your’s and other’s concerns. This group of volunteers is trying to develop and implement strategies. We believe that the city is cleaner than when we started, and realize we have a ways to go. We encourage involvement and suggestions which are practical and goals which are obtainable. Meetings are first and third tuesdays of the month at City Hall. various clean ups run from April-October, on the 3rd Saturday of the month. The website is www.prideinpeoria.com I don’t have a timeframe on the information going up onto website.
One additional note: the garbage cans placed in the neighborhood are the responsiblity of the neighborhood to empty. We have to sign contracts to get them. One can in our area was purchased by a landlord and is his responsiblity to empty it.
Realistically, the city could hire multiple cleaning crews to pick up al the city’s trash in the streets, alleys, yards, etc. I can imagine the tax bill and think of the episode of the Simpsons where Homer had the garbage men doing everything from waxing cars to whatever, at least until they citizens got the bill. It makes much more sense for each of us to care for our own properties and perhaps someone’s who is physically unable to do so. That spreads the work out, and only takes minutes a week to accomplish.
I hope that helps and invite others to help be part of the solution.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Paul,
thank you very much for the post. I will try to attend the next meeting. Anything I can do to assist, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I will help anyway I can. Again, thanks for getting back to us.