Talkin' trash

Apologies for the shortage of blogs recently. The last few days have been extremely full! (I am writing this at nearly 11 PM tonight, and today was so full I have not yet left the building, even to touch salt water. Don't worry, I'll get that done before midnight!)

On Saturday, we hosted the August birthday potluck. We celebrated birthdays for Lachlan and Philip (both Aug 2nd), me (Aug 13th), and Lou and Marcy's soon-to-be-born baby Charlotte (to be determined, but she is due Aug 12th). It was a smallish crowd (around 15 people, I think), but I thoroughly enjoyed the food and the company nonetheless. Everyone seemed to have a good time. My favorite part was the chocolate overdose (chocolate cake with chocolate icing and "death by chocolate" ice cream). Now, that's my kind of birthday dessert!

On Sunday, it was dinner and music at the Jolly Roger as usual. We got a big table and kept filling it up with an ever-growing crowd of friends. That was a lot of fun, too. Come to think of it, eating with friends is just about always fun!

Tonight, the officers of the Ocracoke Civic and Business Association (OCBA) met to prepare the agenda for this month's meeting (to be held Wednesday night). After completing the agenda, we talked for quite a while about an issue currently affecting the village: trash pickup. I would venture a guess that trash pickup is not a topic of concern in your neck of the woods (unless you are one of my readers who lives here, of course!), but here it is an issue. Currently, each property is assessed around $125 annually for trash pickup service, which is paid at the same time as property taxes. There is currently a move afoot to greatly increase this amount, and it has people concerned. Rudy made an excellent point this evening about the fact that individual homes (where 1, 2, 3, or even 4 or 5 people live) are currently assessed the exact same amount as large businesses (restaurants, for example), which of course produce FAR more solid waste. Even rental houses (the newer/larger ones sometimes sleep 8 or 10) are billed the same amount, although all one has to do is to drive by a place like that on checkout day to see they throw away much more than the average residence.

It's a thorny issue which has been raised before, with some people advocating a "pay as you throw" program, where you are billed according to the amount of garbage you dispose of at the solid waste dump area. A potential side effect of this, though, is people dumping their refuse on the side of roads, or in other people's trash cans, as a way of avoiding the fees. I'm in favor of some kind of graduated scale, where businesses and other income producing properties (including rental houses) pay more than year round residences. One suggestion is to charge people based on the number of trash cans they need (rental homes would need and use more). It seems logical to me that large businesses would have dumpsters, and would pay each time they were emptied.

If you have any great ideas, or examples of how this is handled in your town, I would love to hear them! Let's talk trash...literally!