Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham
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I often tell people that they should approach local elections as being more important to them than even a presidential election by using the illustrative phrase “(b)ecause the local elections are about the people who are in charge of picking your trash up at the curbside.”
That being my personal standard, it looks like I’m going to need to be scrutinizing the Waynesboro City Council elections more closely next spring.
I just recently moved into the city, and one of the first things that my wife did upon getting settled in was make a trip to city hall to make the arrangements regarding trash pickup.
Nothing unusual about the first couple of weeks of service thereafter – but around Thanksgiving, the system seemed to break down.
Nobody came out the week of Thanksgiving to pick up our trash – which I could understand a little bit, given the wrench in the schedule that I assume comes with having a holiday basically in the middle of the week.
And then a crew came out early the Monday after Thanksgiving to get us taken care of.
Good news. Right?
Well, except for the fact that we haven’t seen the trash man since – and OK, technically that’s not true. Our office/home is located just up the street from city hall, and it seems that we see city vehicles including city trash trucks drive by multiple times every day. So we’ve seen the trash guy; it’s just that when we see him, he’s on his way somewhere else.
It wouldn’t bother me to pack our two weeks worth of refuse into a truck and drive it over to the euphemistically-named Public Convenience Center – if only I owned a truck and could do so.
Which is kind of why it was important to set up the collections by the city, come to think of it.
The bigger issue to me right now is that I called the city office responsible for such things early this morning – I’m a patient guy, and I know I should have called earlier this week, but I wanted to give them the chance to do it on their own without me having to call in and complain – and as of 1 p.m. today, I have not had anybody return my message.
In the meantime, I have a heapin’ helpin’ of trash sitting in a trash can that is located outside my office window, as it turns out, that I am sure is really good for business – not to mention a backup in the office and upstairs in the residence that I can’t otherwise do anything with at the moment.
If you’re named Obama or Clinton or Giuliani or McCain and can do something about this, let me know.
Otherwise …
Chris Graham is the executive editor of The Augusta Free Press.
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