Opinion: Stop the Presses -- City Hall Sticks It to Residents

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So this ‘IMPORTANT NOTICE’ from the city arrived to tell me that I am a trash scofflaw –- me and, from the looks of this less-than-personalized letter, hundreds of thousands of other Angelenos.

The bureau of sanitation tells me that, out of the goodness of its heart, it provided me with a 90-gallon green trash bin for yard trimmings, a 90-gallon blue container for recyclables, and a 60-gallon black container for refuse.

And it further tells me that I am ‘currently utilizing additional capacity beyond the standard allocation.’

My, my –- two lies in one mass mailing. Probably not a record, but a good start!

Lie number one –- at every house on my street, and in my neighborhood, the black container for refuse is the same size as the blue container and the green one. Unless the city put a false bottom in the black bin, it’s 90 gallons, just like the other ones.

But lie number one makes lie number two possible –- by telling me that a 90-gallon black container is in fact a 60-gallon container, and expecting me to believe it, the city can decide that I am ‘utilizing additional capacity beyond the standard allocation.’

And by this sleight of hand –- defining 90 gallons as 60 –- the city says it’s going to start charging me another $5 a month.

Abracadabra -- ta daaaa!!

Am I to believe –- with the city laying off employees in a budget crunch –- that multitudes of employees have gone door to door to lift the lids on hundreds of thousands of black refuse bins, and then sent off a mass-mailed letter to those of us who may have had the gall to actually put 90 gallons of trash in the 90-gallon container the city gave us for trash? A container the city now describes as 60 gallons?

[Beyond the Orwellian math, I’m doubly offended. If you try, and I do, it’s possible to put almost nothing in that big 90-gallon black container –- almost everything anyone throws out can now be recycled or composted.]

Did you get one of these mathematically loopy letters too? If so, call the bureau of sanitation and give ‘em a little arithmetic lesson: 1 800 773 2489. And if they try to charge you $5 for using the official trash container, tell them you can do new math too: if they bill you for ‘extra’ trash use, give them two quarters, and tell them that makes $5. Really.