I was reading in the paper that the Mayor elect of Portland wants to create a leaf district (to clean up leafs in the street). Now I do not live in Portland but just felt I had to comment on this idea. This is a classic example of government waste and a need to create a bigger government at tax payer expense. There are only a small percentage of people who push their leaves into the street and instead of cracking down on them their idea is to make everyone pay for this.
Now where I live for example, my street has 17 houses on it 11 have yard recycling and 2 have landscaping crews that take care of their yards. 5 of these houses have no trees or bushes (no leaves) of the 12 remaining houses only one does not take care of his leaves. This is about 7% of the people on my street. Why in the world should we all pay more in taxes for just 7% of a problem? Why can’t the city go to these idiots and make then clean up their own leaves. This is just another stupid attempt to get more tax money and hire more city workers.
The end result will be more people will push their leaves into the street. After all if I am paying taxes to clean up the leaves then why should I do it myself? Then what’s next? Why not put my tree trimmings in the street or better yet my grass clipping. We could all cancel our yard recycling and just dump it all in the street sense we would be paying for it. it is time that we all step up and be responsible for ourselves and not expect someone else to pay for our messes. A good example is the auto industry, banking industry and AIG. We all need to take pride in our neighbor hood, counties, cities, states and country.
Now like I said I don’t live in Portland so this will not effect me but you know once it happens in one city others won’t be far behind if they think they can get more taxes.
