More Hammer on Garbage
From John Hammer at The Rhino Times:
The city also found out from the Waste Management and Recycling Task Force that the White Street Landfill was the largest landfill in North Carolina that did not have a program to sell its methane. The White Street Landfill generates about $2 million worth of methane a year, about 40 percent of that is given to the International Textile Group that runs the old Cone Mills White Oak plant, and the rest is burned. One of the subcommittees of the task force looked at several options to use the methane, but so far the city has done nothing to move forward on selling or using the $2 million worth of methane that is being produced. The City Council might as well build a big bonfire and burn two million dollar bills in Phill G. McDonald Plaza every year and at least they could roast marshmallows.
Apparently, the city failed to provide a reason why area garbage haulers are being subsidized $625,000 per year in fees to use the transfer station.
I agree with Hammer that it would be nice to have a city council as concerned with saving money as spending it. If this conduct continues, heads will roll in the next election. It is already a foregone conclusion that Perkins will not be mayor. His performance in six months has been sufficiently abysmal to see to that.
How that is even legal?—giving away public property to a corporation.
Should this situation remain unresolved, some sort of citizen action seems in order.
Council could be required by ordinance to seek the best possible price for the methane, and citizens could petition for such an ordinance. The city charter allows such a measure to go to referendum if a sufficient number of residents sign the petition and the council then chooses not to enact it.
As for giving public property to a corporation, it’s an express violation of the N.C. Constitution, but the state Supreme Court ruled in 1996 in Maready v. City of Winston-Salem that it’s legal if the intent is to benefit the public economically and the benefit to the private interest is only “incidental.” Which is crap in real life but law in the rarified air of economic incentives.
Thanks for putting some meat on our bones.
BTW, I realize you despise Naomi Wolf, but you sounded a lot like her.
I know I’m not exactly welcomed here but let’s not forget that these problems go back several councils. I suspect an investigation might turn up a lot of long buried garbage on a lot of Greensboro’s long time politicians and civic leaders.
Fec, I’ll go away now.
For God’s sake, just make your fucking point and dispense with the dramatics. Of course, as usual, you have nothing.