A Look on the Lighter Side: The mean streets of Port Washington

Judy Epstein

What would you think of a garbage district that didn’t want to pick up garbage?  They should find another line of work, right?

And yet, that’s not the solution our garbage commissioners have arrived at, here in Port Washington.

I’m not talking about the recent strike by the workers of Meadow Carting, which is apparently over, although as of this writing they may still have some catching up to do.

I’m talking about the three elected commissioners of the Port Washington Garbage Special District, and one of their recent decisions.

What seems to be the problem?  Apparently, there is too much trash!

It seems our cans on Main Street were overflowing, forcing people who wanted to throw litter away to put it next to the cans…or balanced on top… or, sadly, just dropped randomly, and gone with the wind.

Now, confronted with overflowing trash cans, you or I might conclude that we needed to collect the trash a little more often.

But the commissioners went in a completely different direction — one which I confess I could not have foreseen.  They eliminated the trash cans, altogether!

I admit, it’s breathtaking in its simplicity.

It’s a reverse twist on the famous line from “Field of Dreams”: “Build it and they will come.”

Instead, what we get is “Remove it, and the trash won’t come.”

There’s only one problem with this:  The trash didn’t read the memo.

There really was a memo — maybe more than one— taped to people’s doors up and down Main Street.

My favorite was the part warning against putting any kind of trash at the curb, during daylight hours. (And for various other reasons, apparently it can’t be picked up from anywhere else.) It must be “placed before sunset…and removed from the curb not later than sunrise.”

This would fit right in with a medieval village, where the town crier walks the streets checking for trash, sun-down to sunup.

Alas, it’s been a while since Port Washington had one of those.

Still — if this works, I see a brilliant future for us all!

If I take away my mailbox, no more bills will come!

Take away all the police, and presto!  No more crime!

Even the world of sewage might be in for a miracle — using the commissioners’ logic, if we close up all the bathrooms in the world, no one will need to use them.

Think of it!  No more sewage!

But I have a question.  Don’t we want people to spend time here, as well as money?

A few hours strolling along our Main Street sidewalks?  Buying a Macchiato here, a Frappuccino there; ambling along, sipping and strolling, until a T-shirt or a bracelet or a dress in a window grabs their attention — at which point they need somewhere to toss their trash?

No. I am dreaming.

What the commissioners really want people to do is: come to Port Washington; buy whatever they must …and then get out!  “And your little bundle of litter, too!”

They actually seem to think people will bundle their trash into their cars and take it back home with them — there to burden somebody else’s garbage commissioner.

Of course, this isn’t much help if Main Street is where you happen to live.

I gather, from statements they’ve made, that our commissioners are big on fining Main Street tenants who put their trash out in the wrong time or place.

Sure, it makes for a fun game of “pin the trash on the tenant,” but it does nothing — as far as I can see — to get better arrangements provided for people’s trash.

And having spent 15 years renting apartments, before moving to Port Washington, I can’t help wondering, “What’s a poor tenant to do?”

The commissioners have even proposed that, if and when they bring some cans back, they might let businesses “adopt” them — putting money toward the exact same service that the garbage district is already given tax dollars to provide. What the commissioners don’t seem willing to do is actually solve the problem.

I heard a story, once, of an architect who submitted his plan for a new building to the Vatican, only to have it rejected. He couldn’t understand it: what had he done wrong?

The only comment was a question in Latin, in the margin: “Suntne angelis?” Are they angels?  The architect had not included any bathrooms.

In Port Washington, our commissioners have gone the architect one better.  Apparently, they know we are angels!

But I wouldn’t bet money on how long that will last.

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