The simple solution to Toledo's trash problem...

For reasons beyond the ability of my 1 gallon bucket to comprehend, the City of Toledo can't seem to get out of its own way. From the mayor who came up with the idea of moving deaf people near the airport comes the latest in government innovation: a "garbage fee" followed shortly thereafter by a policy to not pick up garbage on holidays. The city, in the midst of a budget crisis, has decided that anyone whose regular garbage pick-up falls on a holiday, will not have their trash picked up until the following week. In the past, the city has postponed pick-up by a day for the rest of the week following a holiday, and paid approximately $40,000 in OT for the garbage crews to pick up on Saturday.

In an obvious attempt ( at least to my untrained eye and cheap, plastic bucket ) at poisoning public perception of their garbage men, the city's administration has gone to great lengths to point out that their garbage men work only four hours per day. Following on the heels of the "garbage fee", which is being assessed to city residents to raise money for other services like police and fire, one can only assume that the city would ultimately like to privatize their trash service, stop collecting "unlimited" amounts of trash, or both.

No one in the city administration seems to understand what is painfully clear to me and anyone else who's ever picked up trash to put food on the table: the city's refuse collectors are more productive in four hours a day than just about every other city employee is in eight. "Throwing trash" is a zero-sum game. When all of the trash is picked up, you get to go home. Until all of it is picked up: you don't. If you customers choose to bless you with copious amounts of post-holiday trash, or multiple bags of wet, freshly cut grass - too bad. Is it raining, windy, snowing, below zero? Tough. Get the route picked up.

If and when the city decides that they'll no longer pay their garbage men 8 hours pay for the day - regardless of how long it takes them to pick up the route - the end result is as predictable as a Carlton S. Finkbeiner temper tantrum. It will miraculously start taking the garbage men 8 hours to finish each days' route. Anyone who suggests that the garbage men are "slowing down" need only work the back of a truck for a day: I seriously doubt they'll have the same opinion after 8 hours on the job.

The solution to Toledo's problem is so simple that I'm not surprised that no one has mentioned it. If the average route takes 6 hours to complete 5 routes per week ought to take 30 hours. 30 hours works out to 7.5 hours per day if the trash collection takes place over 4 days. Surely someone at 1 Government Center is smart enough to figure out a way to restructure the trash collection so that it can take place over 4 days on holiday weeks. Somebody somewhere must have room in the bucket for that.