I'm honked off. For the fourth or fifth time, I have received a notice from Susan Young's office that there is trash within 20 feet of my trash cans and I will be fined $50.00 to have the city pick it up if I have not removed it by Tuesday at 7 a.m. when the trucks come through. I live on the corner of Lake and Oakland. My household and three others to the south of my house, pick up tons of trash daily and have done so for as much as 15 years in one case. Why? 1. Because Lake Street is right here and people throw trash out of their cars and into the yards and along the street. 2. There are prostitutes and drug dealers who swarm the area, leaving all sorts of detritus in the alley, along my block, on Lake Street. 3. There's a car wash behind my house (across the alley), folks toss out junk when they bring in their cars to be washed. 4. There's a gas station and two corner groceries that sell candy, pop, snacks and the kids and adults, having finished their treats by the time they reach Oakland, just drop their trash wherever. 5. People park in front of the houses on my block and clean out their cars into the gutters. It rains, all the trash floats down to Lake Street. 6. The drug houses (2) on the block do not have enough containers for their trash, so they dump it on the neighbors, usually very late on Monday nights or early Tuesday mornings (as in 3 a.m.).
The Heritage Homes group, a group of unincorporated households living in the middle of the neighborhood, went to the city council and demanded this $50.00 fine business for Central neighborhood. They did not ask for input from the 8 blocks that abut Lake Street, the 8 blocks that abut Chicago Avenue or the 8 blocks that abut 38th St. That's 1/3 of the neighborhood which had no say in setting up this pilot project, were not even informed that such a project was being ill-conceived. It's rather more dangerous than I want to take on to go out in the alley between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. We have gun shots on a regular basis. We have all manner of truly snarkey people roaming around the alley and street high on all manner of chemicals and/or mentally ill--including the type who have an invisible friend who goes everywhere with them and with whom they argue constantly. We find human feces in our recycle bins on too regular a basis. (This last is known as "gang behavior" by the police. We call it disgusting.) Since this as alleged to be a pilot project, it may be coming to a neighborhood near you soon. That the city council would pass this pilot project without input from those very much impacted is truly dog. I am not a happy camper about this development and I know the parameters of this pilot project needed to have been more carefully considered and the consent of the neighborhood needed to have been obtained. The whole thing, on the part of Heritage Homes, the city council, and Susan Young's department was very knee jerk. In heavily commercial areas, there has got to be a different solution to the issue of trash. Frankly, my neighbors and I have been doing a really top-notch job of it, but we are not going to sit up and guard our trash containers all night every Monday, nor do we expect to be penalized because we won't. WizardMarks, Central _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
