I won't call it a scam, because somewhere in 2008 or so, they announced that they would be doing it. Doing what? Well, a fee for picking up our refuse. Not a fee for the landlord of a building. Not a tax, per se, but a fee for each apartment unit (tenants) for the picking up of our garbage weekly. The announcement probably was contained somewhere in a bill. I am not sure which bill, because the assessment of the fee is in our power bill, the LADWP (Department of Water and Power) here in Los Angeles. It started out lower than it is now. Now, for my little unit, my one bedroom, it is 47 dollars plus a month. There are four units in my building, so it is just under 200 for our building. I am assuming, perhaps wrongly, perhaps correctly, that what I am charged is what my neighbors are being charged. I don't know how many buildings exactly there are in my block, and some are bigger in units (up to about 8), but let's just say, 10 on my side of the street and 10 on the other, so like 20. For this little block then in LA, the total fee for collection of our garbage is approximately 2400. Let's be generous, lets say it is less, 2000 dollars. How many blocks are there in Los Angeles where the LA Bureau of Sanitation is collecting? Wow, that's quite a revenue raise for them!
http://www.lacitysan.org/solid_resources/refuse/services/equipment_charge.htm
What brings today's diatribe on? Two things, I guess. The first is that as a relatively recent draftee into pension living, my monthly income will drop. I am not complaining as I will be doing mighty fine compared to others in similar forced retirement, but it did cause me to do something heretofore I did not, that is, look at my bills. When I looked at what used to be a fairly low electrical bill (I grew up with the use of low wattage and I am giving to amber lighting), I noted that the total bill was well over 100.00 for a two month period.. And there it was this fee, that added almost double what I would be paying, not directly to the Bureau of Sanitation, but indirectly through my electric bill. WHAT? The second thing? I am morphing slowly into a gadfly. I am tired of being told that things make sense which do not, and whether my views are accepted or not, I am going to speak out. To me, this is ANOTHER example of the cliche from the fairy tale, "The Emperor Has No Clothes"
I was a little ashamed to find out that we had been charged this fee since 2008, as I said, but clearly it has gone up a minimum of 10 dollars in that time, because my research indicates that the early maximum was 36 dollars. When I called the Bureau of Sanitation, they were amused by my late in coming outrage as they clearly had been collecting from me and my neighborhood confreres for some time. The answer to my distress was simply, "Well, you have been paying it". Oh, ok, since I have been then it must be good. But I do not recall being given a CHOICE! My neighbor told me that he had looked into our getting a private collector, like the one in West Hollywood, but for a variety of reasons that was not possible. I haven't asked my landlord if being the owner of the building incurs an extra cost for them, or are we bearing entirely the cost as tenants?
I sent an e mail querie to the Bureau of Sanitation like two months ago asking for a more specific explanation and justification.. They obviously feel no need to respond as I am conscripted to payment whether I like it or not. For the record: I don't like it. I think it is open to incredible question from someone who has the resources to investigate. And, if possible, I'd like to see where this "fee" is going. This in particular, because I haven't noticed a concomitant improvement in service.
Here is how I see the service provided. Someone, often one of the tenants or the landlord, has to bring out the containers for the Bureau of Sanitation to pick up. My uncle used to get a little stipend to do it weekly, but he has been ill, so right now, my aunt or I does it. The lovely large trucks come down our streets, ever so slowly and with the authority of their size, blocking any traffic down that particular street. Multiply that one truck going down my block with those other trucks going down other blocks on collection day. As they TRUCK picks up the containers (there is a driver and a guy who kind of lines the cans up before the truck picks up), the containers are dropped wily nilly, often blocking the driveways. A tenant will often have to exit his or her car on the way out to move the can that was so neatly dropped in the driveway in order to escape it. At the end of the work by our Bureau of Sanitation, the street is littered with black and blue plastic bins. The Bureau's work is done.
Did you know, bet you didn't, that there is a LAW, a LAW for goshsakes! that requires that the cans be back in the yards by a certain time, the next day? Does the Bureau do this? It does not. The landlord or tenant must now return the bins that THEY took to the curbs and return them to their weekly homes.
Now, if someone will tell me what it is I am getting for my 47 dollars, our building's nearly 200 dollars, our block's 2000 dollars multiplied by all the payments being made by all the blocks in the Los Angeles area, I might reconsider my feeling of being, well, let's just say, taken advantage of by the city government. Bur for now, I am thinking that money is being taken from me, from us, in a most foul determined folly.
Perhaps someone from the DWP and/or Bureau of Sanitation that felt no obligation to answer my e mail querie, knows one of my FACEBOOK friends, and can post an recitation of all the good we are receiving from this charge that I'll bet most people don't even realize they are being assessed, even the ones that are pensioners. Now if an audit demontrates the good use of this fee, I shall happily continue to pay it. But if, as I suspect is true from the history of government, it is another one of those, we don't know where the money is going things, I shall be more annoyed, as if that were possible.
Now, don't get me started on parking tickets, toll tickets and late in the month moving violation tickets!
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