This op-ed first appeared on the StrongTowns.org website, on September 28, 2020.
A year ago this week, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity was published and we kicked off the Strong America Tour. The book has been the vehicle we hoped it would be, getting our message out to people in a way that is still comfortable and easy-to-share. The Strong Towns 101 course we published this year is a lite-version that people who prefer video can get for free.
Recently in the local paper there was an article titled ”Brainerd forms solid waste committee to address garbage bin issues.” Those of you that read Chapter 9 of my book know where this is going. From the article:
With the formation of a solid waste committee, the Brainerd City Council aims to solve issues related to garbage collection, including bins left out on the street days after being emptied.
Council member Dave Pritschet, who represents downtown and southwest Brainerd, brought the issue before the council in July, reporting he received several complaints from constituents about garbage bins being left on curbs and in the right-of-way for extended periods of time. Additionally, garbage cans left out can cause issues for street sweepers and snow plowers to maneuver around.
The city, however, does not have any regulations regarding how long garbage cans can sit out — only that they must be accessible from the street or alley for garbage haulers. City council and staff members determined any regulations that were added, though, would be difficult to enforce.
Move past the cognitive dissonance of our being in the middle of a pandemic — where local businesses are struggling, unemployment is high, and the city’s budget is coming under increasing pressure, particularly as state revenue shortfalls threaten local aid — focusing on garbage cans is the kind of hyper-local thing that cities have to deal with. It’s important.
And there are legitimate issues with garbage hauling. I am aware of three different providers operating in my neighborhood, although the article indicates there are four within the city. I watch Wednesday and Thursday mornings as haulers go back and forth over the same streets, each individual truck trip doing more pavement damage than dozens of auto trips (or millions of bike trips or an infinite number of people walking).
This seems senseless, and my free-market sensibilities are not offended in the least by the city putting each neighborhood up for competitive bid annually and awarding a monopoly contract to a single provider. This is very much in the public’s interest. More so, the correct level of government for this hyper-local action is the city.
Yet, while we seem nonchalant about millions of dollars in street damage, we are prepared to be vigilant, and devote a not-insignificant amount of staff time and resources, to something that is really a neighborhood-level issue.
Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 9 of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity:
Negative Knowledge
I was at a city council meeting where a resident showed up to complain about a neighbor who wasn’t bringing their garbage can in quickly enough after pickup day. The guy making the complaint demanded that the city council enact an ordinance, with fines, for anyone who leaves their bin out more than 24 hours. Sympathetic council members quickly reached consensus on an entire set of regulations, fines, and routine inspections and then turned to me to see if I could put that package together for them to adopt.
Before responding to the city council, I listed a bunch of reasonable explanations for why someone might not collect their garbage can right away. Then I asked the man making the complaint whether he had spoken with his neighbor about the situation. He hadn’t, of course, even though that would have taken far less time and energy — and likely been more helpful — than coming to the council meeting. He wanted the elected officials to address this discomfort for him. They were eager to be helpful.
I think “eager to be helpful” is a positive description of those in public service — both in a representative capacity and as support staff — but that willingness to help has to be tempered by a sense of subsidiarity. There have been “several complaints” about garbage cans “left on curbs and in the right-of-way for extended periods of time.” Why is this a city issue? Why are neighbors not addressing it among themselves?
I can feel the discomfort with the suggestion. Talk to our neighbors? Ask them to bring their garbage can in? In an age where we converse with people around the world in real time, it’s astounding how difficult having a real conversation with a neighbor can be.
Easier to just call and complain, especially if the city is willing to receive that complaint and act on it. Going back to the original newspaper article:
The safety and public works committee and city staff met with garbage haulers Tuesday, Sept. 8, when Community Development Director David Chanski brought forth a possible solution. He proposed creating a map to indicate when collection is to occur in each area of the city. Residents would still be able to choose their company, but haulers would be regulated to pick up in certain areas only on certain days. That way, city staff would know when cans should and shouldn’t be out in each area of the city and could enforce any potential regulations the city council comes up with.
Council member Kelly Bevans, chair of the safety and public works committee, proposed another idea — city staff picks up bins that have been left out after collection at least three times and leaves it up to the haulers to get them back.
In response, council member Jan Lambert asked why the city would penalize the haulers if it’s homeowners who are leaving the bins out. Bevans said because there are four or five haulers in the city but thousands of residents, creating too much administrative work for staff. He added there is also a mutual agreement between haulers and residents when bins are given out, creating some responsibility on behalf of the haulers.
I’m not going to criticize these council members — this is making sausage, trying to figure things out with the newspaper reporting on what is akin to a brainstorming session — but I will go back to the core question: Why is this the local government’s problem to solve? When did we, as citizens of a community living together in a neighborhood, abdicate not only our responsibility but our agency?
Going back to Chapter 9 of my book:
Most city codes, policies, and practices are a reaction to a complaint, discomfort, or irregular situation. They are enacted in all earnestness by people doing their best to safeguard the community. Many were enacted so long ago, and for such obscure reasons, that nobody recalls precisely why. The only consensus today is that bad things will happen if they are repealed, and — more importantly — the people who repealed it will be held to account.
If cities are going to build complex human habitat, the kind where individuals responding to feedback work collaboratively to make their place more prosperous, then local leaders need to resist the temptation to address every discomfort.
This is the way bad government is built, with accretions of helpful problem solving where what is really needed is capacity building. In 2020 and beyond, we can’t be so cavalier with squandering our resources, be it the investment in the street, the time of our staff, or the capacity of the neighborhood to solve problems.
Set up a system where there is one hauler per neighborhood. Make it an annual or bi-annual contract competitively bid. If there are four haulers, bid them as four neighborhood contracts. The odds are everyone will come out a winner. The public paying for the streets certainly will.
Stop spending staff time and stop asking committee volunteers to work on a problem whose roots are really a breakdown of neighborliness. Instead, have the staff meet with residents in the neighborhood—go out there at the end of the day, perhaps with the council member who received the complaints, and talk it through. Tell them that this is a neighborhood issue, that they need to work together to resolve it. We can’t fix this for them.
Stop enabling neighborhood dysfunction.
If we want to be really proactive, dig into the city’s comprehensive plan where it suggests we assist with the formation of neighborhood groups. They will be helpful with problems like this, not only being able to resolve them in a more neighborly way, but allowing the city to focus on the many urgent issues already on their plate.
A final thought from Chapter 9 of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity:
…the practice of subsidiarity would call on the city to, at most, assist these quarreling neighbors with reaching a decision. They have the capacity to decide and so they must decide; that decision can’t be made for them. Maybe a city staff member goes out and talks to everyone, or maybe the city convenes a meeting with a third-party.
It might be easier and more expedient for the city to rule but taking from these neighbors the responsibility to make the decision robs them not only of their agency, but their capacity to be a collaborator in the project of building a successful city.
To build a strong town, we need everyone to be a collaborator in the project.
Charles Marohn is a Professional Engineer (PE) and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). He’s the Founder and President of StrongTowns.org . He was named one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time by Planetizen in 2017.