Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The Way that the City of Toronto Does Things

David Miller's City of Toronto has one strategy - Snatch and Grab.
Figure out how to wring pennies and dollars from Toronto residents.

Do it often enough and effectively enough and you can make up for the fact that you piss away money the way a drunken sailor does on shore leave (apologies to drunken sailors).

Brian from Hespeler today recalls for us how last year Toronto Hydro responded to people actually conserving energy by boosting rates. Brilliant thinking there.

Then this morning, we're advised that the City is gonna boost rec fees by 21%. That will be sure to make it easier for low income families to find positive distractions for their kids.

And last year they came up with a way of making more money from recycling. No. Not by finding markets for all the recycled material that we can't sell that's land filled. But by charging people for recycling more. You see, you can buy a small, medium or large blue bin and pay an appropriate fee based on se. (Which is fine, but I get pissed off when we (a) pay taxes for something and then (b) the city decides they should all of a sudden charge us a fee.

But now we learn than the only have the medium and large bins. So those frugal recyclers are gonna have to cart their recyclables (40% of which will be landfilled anyway) through their bedrooms.
Geoff Rathbone, general manager of solid waste for Toronto, said the city will eventually offer small recycling bins to those who need them. The trouble is, they won't be rolling off the production line before fall. Very few households will find the small bins hold two weeks' worth of recycling, Rathbone said.

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