MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-10-05 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Hey, Ruben! Plastic bag initiatives!
|
Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn-at-panix.com):
> I for one couldn't care less how solvent the government was, as long as
> essential services and run and functioning to my expectation and the
> ability for it to interfere with and regulate the public is crippled.
Thank you for not being a California voter, then.
California state-funded services are now so strapped that they're
skeleton-staffed even in public-facing departments and agencies, and
this is also having cascading effects on county and city governments
that were made dependent on state revenue-sharing through unintended
consequences of the Proposition 13 Jarvia-Gann Initiative (the
constitutional amendment that curtained property taxes). For example,
in my county (San Mateo County), one of the three superior courthouses,
the one for north county, in South San Francisco, is functionally shut
down except for special proceedings -- so everyone from north county
needs to travel 40 miles further to the county seat in Redwood City.
And mine is a _wealthy_ county.
> Translation: The Department of Sanitation is to pick up the fucking
> garbage, not argue with the public and write tickets because they think
> I didn't.
Here, we don't have municipal sanitation, but rather contracts let out
through competitive bidding to outside companies. My county currently
uses Recology, and before that for many years Allied Waste. The system
works well.
About half of the Bay Area uses private water companies, too. My area
is one of them -- a really good, competent company called California
Water Service Co. I can't remember any community switching back and
forth between munipal water and outside companies, but bet that the
ability to do so keeps them on their toes.
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