You May as Well Just Bend Over

I asked Shawn if we needed to keep that old box spring in the other room; I was gonna haul it to the curb.

"You can't do that anymore," he said.
"Why?!" I asked.

Apparently on the news they said that you can't put anything on the curb until the day before pickup unless you want to be charged $40.

"Well I can't haul tree limbs on a Tuesday afternoon! I"m tired from work--that's a Saturday thing!" I said.

The city doesn't seem to care.

"Well, what day is garbage pickup?" I asked Shawn.
"I dunno, they said on the news that it was going to be in the paper for your district."

We don't get the paper.

"We pay for that curb! We x amount of dollars every month for that curb! We can put whatever we want on our property!" I said.
"Actually, the city owns everything past the water meter. basically everything on the other side of the sidewalk," Shawn said.

We have a little sidewalk that runs in front of our house. On the other side of it there's a 2 foot wide strip of grass, then the curb.

"So, if it's the city's, why don't they mow it?!" I said.
"Because they charge you for it," he said.
"But they mow the parks and recreational areas, that's city property and our tax dollars!" I said.

So we pay for garbage collection with our water bill every single month. This includes whatever garbage we can fit into the dumpster out back. If a neighbor lets some grabage fall out or sets a couch by the dumpster--the city doesn't pick it up, which means it lands in our yard. Isn't that worth anything?

"They're going to have supervisors drving around to make sure no one puts out trash on the curb before the scheduled day. If there's trash, they charge you," Shawn said.

Let me get this straight--We have to pay $40 for curb side pickup UNLESS we want to haul our limbs and trash out on a Tuesday (or whatever day it is--every other week) night after a hard day's blue collar work. Then, we pay for the supervisor's to drive around in their gas-guzzling trucks to charge the people who are apparently out of line.

What are we paying for???? For supervisors to drive around in their air conditioned trucks all day.

If it was like $5 or something, I could see that with the rise in fuel costs. But fourty bucks?!


We gotta get outta this place, if it's the last thing we ever do. I'm tired of our tax dollars going to cushy jobs and big screen TVs. (see the JumboTron post)