So… The loverly Planet Ann Arbor officials have done their best to reduce the police and fire department staffing to what some folks are calling dangerous levels. They ended the annual leaf pickup last fall. They ended the annual Christmas tree pickup last winter. Snow plowing? Half-hearted attempts at best the last few years. Don’t even talk to me about the roads or the Stadium Bridge. On the other hand… They are building a trenormous underground parking garage where my fave old library lot used to be and they *tried* to sneak through a plan to build a conference center Martian toaster on top of that. And there’s a fancy fountain somewhere. And a proposed train station where I don’t *think* there are any trains (but I could be wrong). And I forget what else. Buckets, anyone?

Now they are talking about coming after our trash pickup service. We can’t afford it, we have to cut back services, yada yada… Among the ideas currently being floated? Only pick up the trash once every two weeks. Okay, that would probably work in the winter but my handy dandy A2 garbage cart gets pretty darned odiferous when it’s 90 every day. I suppose I could freeze the most odiferous garbage items, like Radical Betty used to do when the moominbeach residents used to take turns taking everyone’s garbage to the dump. I can just imagine trying to get all of the Planet Ann Arbor Residents to do something like *that*. Another idea? Have people put all of the trash receptacles on one side of the street. Now that actually sounded good to me at first. With trash cans on both sides of the street, the trucks currently have to make two passes down each street. That has got to be expensive! But then I thought about how much fun (not) it is to haul those big carts out to the street through eight inches of unplowed snow. And then I thought about how easy it is for meeee to manage big garbage carts but what about our more frail residents. I will guess that there are some folks around who have enough trouble hauling those things out to the curb on a dry mid-summer day. I wonder how I’ll feel about these carts when I am 90? And who will help me? Or will I be hanging out at Freighter View? I hope I can get The Comm’s room!

The news that our local taxes can’t afford the level of trash collection we’ve become accustomed to comes after years and years of upgrades to trash pickup equipment. First it was the handy-dandy A2 garbage cart and new trucks that picked it up with a big arm. Compost and recycle carts followed along with their respective pick-up trucks. I actually love this system but it does involve a lot of trucks and maybe it’s too good to be true?

But yes, we are looking to hire a new city administrator here, now that the last one has grabbed started drawing his pension and gone to work for our wondrous governor at a nice six-figure salary. We have two candidates for the administrator position and one of them is from the Yooperland (actually, he isn’t *from* the Yooperland but he has lived and worked there for enough years to qualify for Yooper status). He’s the one I hope they hire and it is not because he’s a Yooper or because I think he will improve the snow removal situation (although I hope that situation does improve because it was piss-poor last winter). It is because he is (in my not-always-very-humble opinion) the superior candidate. Alas, in breaking news, it turns out that he is also a finalist for a similar job in Iowa. Pick Michigan. Pick Michigan. Pick Michigan. Say yeeeesssss to Michigan!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2011 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.