If you are a renter, your landlord will receive a property tax bill, and your landlord will use a portion of your rent to pay the bill.
The tax bill will include a charge of over $200 for Solid Waste Service. Here is where your money goes.
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| Shady Grove Waste Transfer Station, Montgomery County -- June 23, 2014 |
The above photo was taken on June 23, 2014, and is the standard scene at the Shady Grove Transfer Station any time that the facility is open for business. These workers are not on a break. They are getting paid to do what you see them doing.
Moments before the photo was taken, the worker on the left was reading a novel. He placed the book on the table a few moments before the photo was taken.
That part of the waste transfer station is hardly the only thing that you could have taken a picture of. Have ya been inside the recycling facility? (It makes a great field trip, BTW.) Plenty going on in there. How about further back in the recycling area, where there are workers constantly organizing and moving trash and recycling and directing drivers to where to drop off any of a number of items to be recycled and kept out of landfills? The free mulch pile? The compost bins available free to County residents? The hundreds and hundreds of trucks in the larger building, and those who coordinate them? The folks working the cranes out back and loading recycling into containers and containers onto train cars? You had to pick THIS picture?
ReplyDeleteAs for these workers in the outside resident trash dropoff area, when it's not busy, they do indeed hang out like this, but when it's busy and cars are lined up to get in and to go through on their way out of the recycling area, they're directing traffic to keep things from getting tied up. It does NOT always look like this, and it's mean-spirited to use this to make it seem like this is the only thing that their $200 goes to. Maybe a supervisor needs to re-evaluate how many staffers are needed at this time of this day if that's what you see regularly, but I see this less than I see them up and about.
comment makes no sense, The picture is about these extra workers, same as with credit cards. By your logic boe should keep eating out because teachers are working hard in the classroom
DeleteDo you really think the Waste Transfer Station only employs these two ppl in this photograph in this part od the facility? Do you honestly think anyone can really extrapolate that the whole staff is idle from a photo of 2 people?
DeleteThis blog has done some good work,but this is a cheap shot.
Free mulch? Free compost bins? None of this is free. The cost of the mulch manufacturing (grinding of landscape debris) and the compost bins is funded by taxpayers. How much is the county paying for those compost bins, by the way? Did they procure them through a competitive bid?
Delete"It does NOT always look like this" -- Maybe not always. Just whenever I go there.
Sure, there are many people who actually work at the Shady Grove facility. But there are rather obviously a bunch who are paid -- using our tax money -- to do little more than sit.
2 =/= "a bunch."
DeletePerhaps you should investigate how the compost bins have been obtained, and maybe in your spare time you can compare the cost of the free mulch pile to the cost of buying it bag by bag at Home Depot. (You do know the county also sells compost, right, so it's not all on taxpayer backs?) And while you're at it, go visit other parts of the facility and see people NOT reading books or waiting for cars to arrive. See people controlling the traffic of trucks dropping off trash and recycling. See people physically sorting through the stuff that doesn't even belong in the recycle bins. Check out the cranes working in the freight rail area of the facility. Look at the workers in the community recycling dropoff area in places from hazardous waste to assisting people to collecting used motor oil.
If you don't think we need this place, if you think it's better to do what the idiots who lived in our house before us did and just keep your used motor oil in plastic jugs behind your garage and bury trash in your yard or consign recyclables to landfills because you/they still think the planet is limitlessly huge, then go join the Flat Earth Society - but for many of us, the Waste Transfer Station is an option we're happy to help fund because it means we can do better.
If a supervisor needs to look at scheduling too many workers in this part of the WTS during a time of day when it's not busy, then so be it - call them on it, but don't condemn the entire facility over it. Uncovering credit card fraud counts as journalism; this - not so much.
Funny, the reply I wrote earlier has not appeared, while other written since then *have.*
DeleteExposing credit card fraud can pass for journalism, and constitutes a reason to take the Parent Coalition seriously.
Posting a picture of TWO WORKERS and extrapolating waste on a huge scale from that is anything but.
There'll be a litigation
ReplyDeleteFor this abomination
To get a reparation
From the waste station
That uses its location
For sun and relaxation
And mind stimulation
Instead of trash collection.
To the casual observer, it can pass for either a refreshment stand or a book signing station.
ReplyDeleteI've been to that facility many times, and when there's work to do, the workers are always busy doing it.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was the Parents Coalition website? How is this post "Dedicated to improving responsiveness and performance of Montgomery County Public Schools"? Sounds like a grumpy guy with a political beef to me.
This is why MCPS schools have plywood in the windows. This is why classrooms are overcrowded. This is why classroom trailers rot in place before they are ever replaced. This is why mold overtakes schools.
Delete49 MCPS administrators are driving around in cars paid for by the MCPS budget. It's all about the choices that are made with public dollars.
Please tell teachers they are just "grumpy" when they complain about having to buy classroom resources out of their own pockets. Tell children in the ER with asthma attacks that they are just "grumpy."
It's one County budget and waste of resources is waste of resources.