Editor’s note

Let’s see if we got this right. The city is offering to be the bill collection agent for the garbage haulers, using the threat of cutting off water or electricity for those who don’t pay their bills. Then, besides collecting the money, the city would recruit about 3,000 new customers for these private businesses, increasing their revenues. And some of the haulers are saying this is a ploy to drive them out of business? What Ald. Cory Jobe and Ald. Doris Turner have proposed preserves the private-hauler system while solving the problem of too many households without service. Haulers should realize that if this proposal fails, the only good alternative is a single-payer municipal waste system, like the system that works so well in most other cities across the country. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher