Uncollected Trash

Mayor Blake,

Please do your job and administer Milford city services, as you were elected to do.

This morning again, Public Works behaved like a sullen child. In fact, as trash removal services rolled past the trash containers on East Broadway, leaving them uncollected and easy pickings for birds and animals, I questioned why my covered receptacle was not emptied. The city employee quipped back an adolescent answer.

As you’ll see in accompanying photos, East Broadway is not only awash in trash from Hurricane Sandy and the snowstorm Nemo, but in today’s trash left uncollected by Public Works. More than ten days after the snowstorm, huge snow banks block parking spaces for many residents who live year round at Milford beach, and more dangerously, block the vision of motorists and pedestrians approaching area intersections.Trash services are sporadic.

Has Milford not cultivated its shoreline real estate over the years? Does it not benefit from active beach recreational enterprise? Is the tax base not amply supplemented by the shoreline community—owners and renters who pay high taxes and rents? Does it not benefit from residents who volunteer for beach cleanups? Aren’t beach residents entitled to the same services the rest of Milford receives? How can the city bite the hand that feeds it—its residents?

The massive amount of snow that fell impeded normal living for all of us, whether we live on a city street, country road or at the beach. Most of us waited patiently for the roads to be plowed, but beach dwellings were left behind. Still, with trash day approaching, we dutifully placed our recycling containers and trash receptacles on top of the snow—since the only other place to deposit them was in the middle of a narrow street.

Having been the brunt of Public Works’ unfoundedly sloppy treatment in the past, I was especially careful to place my covered bin in easy reach, on the snow. Other students who live adjacent, left their bins on the sidewalk, clearly in reach as well.  Trash was properly bagged.

But ill-tempered Public Works employees refused pick up.

The only guess to explain why Public Works’ refuses to pick up this trash is volume. Indeed, our stretch of the road is populated by many students crowded into beach cottages, as owners like to maximize rental income and the city encourages this. Yes, students are notorious for trashing the neighborhood. But if only one bin is misplaced, our trash collectors whiz by another ten bins, properly placed.

Does this carelessness, and callousness, serve the larger community or the city of Milford? Does it enhance Milford’s coastline? Milford beaches are the most unkempt beaches in southern Connecticut, and we can thank our Public Works department, and Mayor Blake’s lack of attention, for that.

When it comes to city services at the beach, the city is absent. Mayor Blake permits the Public Works department to arbitrarily decide when to apply city services, and when not to; when to pick up trash, when to leave it; when and how much snow to remove.

Why does this natural resource, the precious shoreline, suffer the abuse not only of nature, but of its own city employees?

Mayor Blake, reign in your capricious and ineffective Public Works employees or replace them with people who care about their city.