Questions about Curbside Recycling for the Kirkwood City Council

Dear Kirkwood City Council,

In a November 6, 2008 Webster-________ Times article it was reported concerning the October 23, 2008 Kirkwood Town Hall meeting that the three City Council members in attendance "responded positively" to a citizen's "suggestion to implement curbside recycling."

I do have to wonder if this is true given the fact that the reporter and the entire editorial staff of the our alleged "Hometown Newspaper" in that same article once again proved how little they know about Kirkwood by confusing Blue Water Grill with Graham's Grill. I do have to wonder if Mr. Huelsmann was a top graduate of Scoop Corrigan's journalism course on fact-checking? These and other serious journalistic and editorial questions about our alleged "Hometown Newspaper" need to be asked and answered, but today is not that day.

Hoping that Mr. Huelsmann did actually get the facts straight on this subject and you are going to recycle the curbside question, I wish to ask a few questions and along the way present a few facts on the issue.

The first question that needs to be asked is, "Why does the City of Kirkwood need a curbside recycling service?"

The main reason why I have to ask this question is that curbside recycling service has been available to Kirkwood citizens since 1997. So, we are not behind on having curbside recycling in our community as some proponents like to flagrantly twist and distort the issue. Yes, Earth Circle Recycling really has been providing curbside service in Kirkwood for more than a decade now. In addition, their fee is only $100 a year for once-a-week pickup. This brings their service costs to their customers below $2.00 a week for curbside service. So, if a citizen wants curbside service there is nothing stopping them from getting that service.

The next question is, "How does the City of Kirkwood with a curbside service intend to beat the present cost to recycle in our community?"

Not only do you realistically have to beat the less than $2.00 a week for once-a-week pickup, while not changing our present voter approved twice-a-week trash pickup. But, there is even more to consider. How about those of us citizens who do not want to pay an additional fee for a curbside service we do not need? It costs us, customers of our present fine City recyclery absolutely nothing, nada, diddly-squat, nil, null, goose-egg, zero, zip, blanko, zilch, zippo. Need I give any more synonyms? How do you plan to beat FREE with a curbside service?

This brings us to the next question that needs to be asked. "What will it cost the citizens who will need to pay the price tag for the City of Kirkwood to implement a curbside recycling service?"

This is the real rubber-hits-the-road question of this issue. I do not know anyone who believes we need to add another unnecessary cost to our fellow citizens. Also, I will remind you of the fact that the voters of this community in April, 2004 overwhelmingly sent a clear message to the City Council. The voters chose by a margin of over 2.8-to-1 that they did not want to add curbside recycling. A 2-to-1 margin in any other community is considered a mandate from the citizens. Yet, here it is just over 4 years later, with less than a handful of misinformed and distorted Mailbag letters on the subject having been written in the Webster-________ Times since April and our community is supposed to rehash this subject all over again.

My final question is, "Given the above facts presented and the questions asked do we really need to rehash the subject of curbside recycling all over again?"

This letter to you will be posted on my Kirkwood blog … www.joekirkwood.blogspot.com.

Thank you for your time and service to our community.
Joe

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Hello Reader ... I hope you will post your thoughts on the subject by clicking on the "Comments" link below. Thanks and have a great day! Joe