In an effort to chip away at Philadelphia's billion-dollar deficit, our esteemed mayor has proposed that we pay for trash pickup. His first proposal, a weekly five-dollar fee, was slammed. To be honest, that doesn't sound completely outrageous. But his new idea? Not only is he proposing a small annual fee (though I haven't heard yet how "small") (oh, wait; this article puts it at $260), but also charging people per trash bag. Oh, and those bags? Will be available for purchase from the city.
"We will have two size bags, so a smaller bag, say a 15-gallon bag, will be a dollar, and a 30 gallon bag will be two dollars. You can put out twenty of them if you want to pay for twenty bags of trash, you can put out one." -- deputy mayor Rina Cutler
Um, what? I mean, if this plan worked it would be great. Not only would it free up some money for the city, it would also encourage "people to put more into recycling, for which there would be no charge." Again, great, but there's no way this shit is going to fly in Philadelphia. For one thing, how the hell are they going to enforce it? Also, we already paid for trash pickup. With our taxes. It was kind of fun, though, watching the city council members' reactions on the news. They weren't as ... um ... colorful as some of the regular people interviewed on the street, but the overall opinion seemed pretty much the same.
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