Snellville's mayor is a supporter of the mandatory trash pickup.
One of the more outspoken supporters of the plan is Jerry Oberholtzer, the mayor of Snellville whose residents have city trash service which they pay for as part of their property taxes. For years, people outside of Snellville who don’t pay for trash service have been slipping into the city at night and dumping trash in vacant lots and trash bins, said Oberholtzer, who is fed up with it and happy with the new law.A lady in the article is quoted as saying that the mandatory trash pick-up is "unconstitutional" and compares it to Obamacare.
“People think it’s their God-given right to come in here and dump their trash in our city,” said Oberholtzer. “It’s a terrible problem. It costs our businesses money because their Dumpsters get filled up and they have to pay money to rent a larger one.”
It’s gotten so bad, the mayor said, “the other day I was driving down the road and I almost ran over a mattress. I had to swerve to miss it.”
From: Garbage fees sowing discord
“This is tantamount to Obamacare,” said Debbie Dooley, an organizer of the protest. “It’s socialized. It’s the government forcing people to purchase something and that’s unconstitutional.”Where does it say in the Constitution that you have the right to free trash pick up? How could the Founding Fathers be so short-sighted to not include your right to throw away your trash? (ok, that last bit was sarcasm, in case you missed that.) By this logic, then having to buy groceries, water, and electric is unconstitutional.
I believe that when people have to pay for the amount of trash they produce, they will work to reduce their waste output. They can reduce their output by recycling. Or is recycling an insidious leftist conspiracy? Oh puh-leeze.
We all hate more bills, but it's a fact of life.
I'm getting more educated on this topic, and what people really don't like is that they are expected to pony up 1-1/2 years' worth of payments in advance, it will mess up their escrow, and they don't like that they won't have any control over their service, customer service, or lack thereof if that happens.
ReplyDeleteI have several problems with this plan. First, is that I no longer get to choose the company I do business with. I was originally with BFI, but they angered me, so I chose Southern Sanitation AND saved money by switching. With the new mandated hauler, I am a slave to that company's whims, with ZERO recourse. Second, I don't like having the payments bundled with my property taxes. It does screw up the escrow. Third, I don't know how much of the $300+ that my hauling is costing me is going to the hauler, and how much the county is pocketing, because platitudes about this being "for the children" or about stopping illegal dumping are just that: platitudes. The real issue is Gwinnett saw this as another way to make money.
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