Salem Political Snark

Oregon Senate Republicans walk out again

This is a political non-surprise. Totally predictable.

Today every Senate Republican in the state legislature walked out for the fourth time in two years, denying Democrats the two-thirds quorum needed to do anything.

And why wouldn't they? 

Like I said in a 2019 blog post, "Oregon Dems surrender to Republicans like scared little mice," rewarding the GOP when they behave badly virtually guarantees that the bad behavior will continue.

Every parent of a young child knows this, but not Democratic leaders. Here's what I said in 2019. The "you" refers to Senate President Peter Courtney.

The institution of the Oregon Senate didn't "work" when you and other Democratic leaders agreed to kill the vaccine and gun control bills in exchange for Republicans returning to do the job they were elected to do: take part in Senate proceedings.

Actually what happened here is that Democrats gave in to a ransom request by Republicans.

Not surprisingly, we can expect that since the GOP ploy worked, they're going to try it again.

Which Republicans did. In the 2020 short session, there was another GOP walkout in protest of a climate change bill. The only good news this time was that Democrats didn't make any deals.

The session simply ended, as I described in "Make Oregon Republicans pay for their anti-democracy walkout."

Problem is, so far as I know there weren't any negative consequences for those who walked out, failing to perform their duty as elected officials. No fines. No attempt to revise the 2/3 quorum requirement. Nothing.

Now Senate Republicans aren't walking out in protest of legislation proposed by Democrats.

They've walking out because they don't feel listened to by Governor Brown after demanding that Oregon schools open up immediately for full in-person instruction, among other Covid-related demands.

But all 11 members of the Republican caucus signed a letter to the governor in which they insisted she “immediately reopen schools because science says it’s safe” and increase the amount of COVID-19 vaccines available to older Oregonians, especially in rural areas.

“Our previous efforts to bring these issues to your attention have gone unacknowledged,” the 11 Republicans wrote in their letter. “Thus, we are protesting today’s floor session. In this show of solidarity with Oregonians who are being failed by the current direction of your policies, we hope this action conveys the importance of these issues.”

Oh, boo-hoo. 

Republicans in Oregon hold no statewide office. They aren't close to controlling either the state House or Senate. They have no real platform other than professing eternal loyalty to Donald Trump.

Voters keep saying NO to what the GOP is offering Oregonians.

Instead of changing their right-wing policies to appeal to moderate voters, which would be the reasonable thing to do, Oregon Republicans persist in acting like babies -- having a tantrum and spilling the legislature milk because they aren't being allowed to get their way by the Democratic parents who run the state Capitol.

The only thing Democrat leaders in the legislature should do in response to Republican walkouts is simple: nothing. 

Meaning, give the Republicans nothing. No attention. No rewards. No conciliatory talk. If the GOP wants to grind the legislature to a halt, fine. Have a daily press conference with a chart showing how much the Republicans are getting paid while shirking their oath of office.


"Best of my ability" doesn't mean walking out on the job whenever you don't get your way, politically. The minority party shouldn't expect to control things in Oregon. 

That's the reward a majority party earns for winning elections. Win more elections, GOP. That's the way to get back in power, not by walking out in hissy fits.

Oregon Republicans are acting like Congressional Republicans, a majority of whom voted to overturn Joe Biden's free and fair victory over Donald Trump. Likewise, our local right-wing extremists basically are trying to overturn recent Oregon elections that gave Democrats healthy majorities in both houses of the state legislature. 

As I've said before, democracy is threatened by what the Oregon GOP is doing. If Republicans cared about democracy, they wouldn't be acting the way they are. Keep that in mind, voters.

Salem's Enlightened Theatrics breaks Covid rules

Last weekend Salem's Enlightened Theatrics reportedly broke the Oregon Health Authority Covid rules by having in-person performances of a student production of Les Miserables that exceeded what is allowed for indoor entertainment.

l've heard that at Saturday night's performance over 70 people were in attendance, food and beverages were sold and consumed, and some people were unmasked.

Here's what is allowed for an Extreme Risk county, which Marion County is.

The Enlightened Theatrics auditorium is over 500 square feet, so they could have only six people at each performance. Food and drink can't be consumed indoors. So it appears that Enlightened Theatrics broke several Covid rules.

Thus it sure looks like Enlightened Theatrics has decided to follow in the footsteps of Courthouse Club Fitness -- risking a fine in order to stay open. 

What's disturbing in both cases goes beyond the danger to patrons by ignoring Oregon Health Authority guidelines that are designed to prevent Covid infections.

When Enlightened Theatrics decided to put on the in-person performances, it essentially said to other theatre companies, movie theaters, and in-door entertainment venues, "Ha-ha, you're closed and we're open! We've got enough money to pay a fine and probably you don't! You're a goody-goody who complies with Covid regulations and we're an outlaw who goes our own way!"

Well, I don't think Enlightened Theatrics should be proud of that attitude, just as I don't think Courthouse Club Fitness should be proud of racking up over $100,000 in fines as it stays open while other gyms in extreme risk counties remain closed.

I've enjoyed quite a few Enlightened Theatrics productions. They offer high quality live performances at a reasonable cost. But I'm bothered by Enlightened Theatrics scoffing at Covid restrictions that other indoor entertainment venues in Salem are complying with.

PGE's storm communications are astoundingly inept

Along with a disturbingly large number of other people, my wife and I have endured a full week of no electricity after the February 12 ice/snow storm devastated much of Oregon.

(Our dog is doing just fine.)

How much longer will our electricity be off? Starting last Monday, Portland General Electric, or PGE, has considered this to be a secret not to be disclosed to their customers. 

Whenever I log into my PGE account, I'm met with a cryptic "not available at this time" in the Estimated Time On part of our outage report.

OK, I can understand that PGE wouldn't be able to provide its customers with a valid estimate of how long their power will be off in the early days of a widespread outage.

But even after a week, PGE still won't tell people how much longer they have to put up with all the inconveniences that come with having no electricity. 

This is causing a lot of frustration. 

I know, because regularly I pick up my iPhone, click on Tweetbot, a Twitter app, and search for tweets matching "@PortlandGeneral."

Maybe a quarter of tweets with this tag praise PGE for restoring the person's power.

The rest run the gamut from mildly critical of PGE to full-on rants about how horrendously awful PGE's response to the storm has been -- both in terms of turning electricity back on and PGE's dreadful communications strategy, which seems focused on keeping customers as much in the dark as possible regarding when their power will return.

This afternoon, though, I noticed a tweet from PGE that seemed promising. 

It didn't take long, though, for me to realize that the new online map not only wasn't useful, it was less than useful. Here's why.

On Thursday, I think it was (yesterday), PGE announced that it expected to have power restored to 90% of its customers by Friday. This is what the Storm Restoration Update page on the PGE web site says.

It's difficult to tell how many customers comprise that 90%, or the remaining 10%, without knowing what "currently" means in the screenshot above.

Regardless of the number, the important thing is that thousands of customers are going to be in the unfortunate 10%, which includes me, since our power is still off. 

On that same web page, PGE described how many customers would lack power after Friday night and where the longest waits to have power restored would be.

This certainly implies -- in fact it basically says it outright -- that the 15,000 customers who haven't had their power turned on by Friday night, tonight, and don't live in the areas listed above, won't have to wait as long as the people who do live in those areas.

UPDATE: I just came across a PGE tweet that said "As of 5pm today, 54,900 customers are still without power." So unless a lot of customers got their power restored between 5 pm and midnight today, PGE underestimated how many customers would lack power on February 19 by 39,900. Sure doesn't make me feel any more confident in PGE's competence.

So, yay, I thought after reading this. My wife and I live in rural south Salem near the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. We're nowhere near the areas hit hardest -- Silverton, Woodburn, West Linn, Canby, etc.

I looked forward, then, to learning from the new map when we'd have electricity again. 

That hope was dashed when I actually looked at the map. The title above the map was a giveaway: Check Your Zone. I didn't want to check a zone. I wanted to check our specific outage area, our local neighborhood which had been showing 503 customers without electricity.

This is a screenshot of the overall area, showing the Legend. Light blue has an estimated restoration time of up to 3 days; yellow, up to five days; brown, up to nine days.

The map looks much different when it is zoomed in on my iPhone. This is Salem.The whole city of Salem appears to be in the yellow "up to 5 days" category. The purple dots show individual outages. I'm assuming the mass of dots obscuring much of Salem is covering up yellow.

How useful is this information? So minimal I'd call it useless.

People want to know when the electricity for their home or business will return, not the maximum amount of time it will take to restore power in all parts of Salem, which could range from one day (Saturday) to five days (Wednesday).

Likewise, here's the screenshot for my area. Our house is a bit north and east of Spring Reservoir, better termed Spring Lake. Our neighborhood is in the brown "up to nine days" zone. Again, though, this information is useless.
Here's a zoomed-out screenshot of the brown area. It's huge. There's no way every customer currently lacking power in this area is going to wait a similar length of time to have their electricity back on.

Thus PGE has produced a map that contains essentially zero useful information. It seems to be a way for PGE to say "we're providing customers with an estimate of when their power will be restored" without actually doing this.

Also, saying "up to nine days" is meaningless. A neighbor talked with a PGE employee today who was inspecting a downed line in our neighborhood. Reportedly the PGE guy said we might have power restored as early as tomorrow.

That's within the "up to nine days," because tomorrow would be one day. But one day is much different from nine days. 

Botton line: PGE is persisting in its screwed-up post-storm communications strategy -- which is aimed at giving customers as little useful information about their specific outage as possible. I sure hope legislators and state officials conduct hearings into how PGE has handled getting electricity back for its customers.

I have many questions about this, as I'm sure others do also.

Lastly, the conflict between this map and the list of hardest hit areas listed on the PGE web site -- Woodburn, Silverton, West Linn, Canby, etc. -- is huge. Most of those "hardest hit" areas are shown in the same color as Salem, yellow, up to five days restoration time.

So PGE is saying one thing at the top of that web page, then it is saying another thing in the map further down the page. Like I've been saying, the PGE communications strategy is so bad, it would be comical if being without electricity weren't so serious.

Ice storm disaster should prompt close look at PGE

Most of us don't pay much attention to our power company until the electricity goes off. Then we realize how important the electrical grid is to daily life.

Well, "important" is an understatement. 

"Absolutely essential" is a better way to put it. Without reliable electricity civilization as we know it can't exist. And this will only become more true as the United States, and the world, steadily moves away from fossil fuels.

Electric cars obviously need electricity to function. So when the ice storm that hit Oregon last Friday cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes in our state, the ability to conveniently charge electric cars became impossible.

The widespread power outages affected most people in Northwest Oregon, though, not just electric car owners. Wells don't run without electricity. Neither do most heating systems. 

I've been critical of how Portland General Electric, Oregon's largest utility, has handled the ice storm crisis from a communications standpoint.

Along with many others, PGE's failure to provide even a rough estimate to customers of when power would be restored struck me as a serious error -- causing anguish, uncertainty, and frustration.

At a time when people were already physically in the dark, it was decidedly unhelpful for PGE to keep people mentally in the dark regarding details of how power would be restored to certain areas.

Tomorrow PGE is going to start holding daily press conferences. That's almost a week too late. PGE management should have been doing this during the entire ice storm aftermath. 

The basic point I'm making here is that while the efforts of PGE employees to restore power as quickly as possible deserve a lot of praise, this shouldn't stop politicians, state/local officials, and others concerned with how public utilities function from asking some tough questions of PGE executives.

When a mass shooting occurs in this country, defenders of the gun status quo say, "It's too early to point fingers at the cause of what just happened." 

That's wrong. Immediately after a disaster is the correct time to seek answers to questions that, when answered, can shed light on how to prevent future similar disasters.

I got to thinking about this more seriously after talking with a couple of people today about PGE.

We'd started off talking about something else, but not surprisingly the conversations edged around to the subject on everybody's mind after the February 12 ice storm hit. When will electricity come back on? 

Which leads to another question. Why did the electricity go off for hundreds of thousands of people? 

The people I talked with both had friends with some inside information about how PGE operates. Obviously I have no way of knowing whether that information is true. It has a certain ring of truth, though, and helped inform the questions that I believe need to be answered in coming months.

These aren't exhaustive. They're just questions that have been on my mind as a PGE customer who, at the moment, has gone five full days without electricity.

(1) It's well known that climate change will lead to more extreme weather events. Did PGE engage in scenario planning that included a polar vortex bringing cold arctic air into the Pacific Northwest that was combined with a moisture-laden storm moving in from the Pacific? (Which is what produced this ice/snow storm.)

(2) If "yes" to #1 above, did PGE plan ahead for how to cope with such a scenario? If "no" to #1 above, why wasn't this done?

(3) Has PGE engaged in adequate preventive maintenance, such as tree trimming/removal, aimed at reducing outages during an extreme weather event?

(4) Regarding that sort of preventive maintenance, has contracting out tree trimming/removal to private companies led to better or worse outcomes as regards storm-related power outages?

(5) PGE has reported significant damage to major transmission lines and substations during the recent storm. Ice storms are common in Northwest Oregon. Why so such damage to important electrical infrastructure from a foreseeable weather event?

(6) It appears that out-of-state utility crews weren't called in by PGE until several days after the ice/snow storm. If this was the case, why the delay when the scope of damage was evident early on?

(7) For several days PGE provided an estimate to customers of when their power would be restored. On the Monday following the storm, these estimates stopped being made. Who made the decision to do this, and why was it done?

(8) Why did PGE fail to hold any press conferences about its response to the electricity outages for six days following the storm? 

(9) What steps will PGE be taking to help assure that hundreds of thousands of its customers won't lose power for such a long time when the next major weather event strikes Oregon? 

(10) In line with #9, does PGE have plans to place electrical lines underground in areas that are prone to extreme events such as wildfires and ice storms?

Controversy erupts over Leung missing out on City Council committees

Mayor Bennett's initial decision to assign Councilor Jackie Leung to only one Salem City Council committee (as an alternate, moreover) struck many people as a big deal about something, whereas I've come to see it as much ado about almost nothing.

Jackie Leung

I learned about what I'm tempted to call CommitteeGate (just gave in to that temptation) after reading several Facebook posts about this on a private progressive Facebook group.

Some city councilors got as many as five, six, or seven committee assignments. My first reaction was that it did seem strange that Leung got such little committee love from the Mayor.

Could this be due to the fact that on some issues she has gone against the prevailing City Council view, including the positions of fellow progressives?

That was one possibility, though it seemed unlikely to me. Sure, that's something Donald Trump would do, but Mayor Bennett is no Trump, thankfully. 

Meaning, Bennett is a politician, along with the other members of the City Council.

However, stiffing a member on committee assignments because he disagreed with her on certain issues seemed most unlikely to me. Bennett isn't adverse to playing hardball, yet this would have been mudball -- too obvious and dirty.

Numerous comments on the Facebook posts accused Mayor Bennett of racism and sexism for not assigning a woman of color to City Council committees. 

This struck me as being both over-the-top and unbelievable. Sure, racism and sexism are very much present in Salem, which includes City Hall. 

Sometimes, though, unfortunate things happen to women of color which have nothing to do with them being a woman, or a person of color.

So jumping to a conspiracy theory just because the initial 2021 Salem City Council Committee Assignments gave Councilor Leung only one alternate slot struck me as unjustified. 

Yesterday I decided to simply ask Mayor Bennett about this via an email.

Chuck, could you explain why at first you didn’t assign Councilor Leung to any City Council committees? That got quite a bit of attention on Facebook, and I was among those who thought this seemed decidedly strange. 

It’s good that after Councilor Andersen raised this issue Leung now is on three committees, if I recall correctly. But it would be good to hear from you why Leung was shut out of any committees on the first go-round.  

 

     -- Brian

This is the response I got on Monday night, following yesterday's City Council meeting.

Hi Brian, Jackie didn’t contact me about committee assignments and had asked last year not to be on one because of time. Last week I sent out the proposed assignments to councilors seeking reaction and heard nothing back til this morning. Over the past couple of months all of the other councilors contacted me about their interest in certain committees. So, I just assumed she was fine with not adding to her load. I was wrong. Tom called and offered two of his assignments and I put in one of mine. She’s on Rules, City Manager Evaluation, Finance and Water/Waste water.  

Chuck

That sounded eminently believable to me. Others might disagree, but in general I lean toward accepting what someone says unless there is good reason to think otherwise. 

It seems like there was a failure to communicate, as the saying goes. Apparently Councilor Leung didn't make her 2021 committee wishes known in a timely fashion, so Mayor Bennett assumed she didn't want to be on any, as was true in 2020.

Sure, Bennett could have made more of an effort to confirm this, just as Leung could have made more of an effort to respond to the Mayor's proposed committee assignments.

Sometimes mistakes are just that. Well, usually mistakes are just mistakes. However, in the realm of politics, even local politics, there is a tendency to read more into a mishap than is actually there.

I've been guilty of that. Most of us have. We want to categorize actions, and people, into good and bad categories -- whereas much or most of the time this is making a morality play out of a simple screw-up.

Anyway, Councilor Leung now is on four committees, albeit as an alternate for two of them.

Filibuster is a racist Republican relic. It needs to go.

Today I finished reading "Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy," by Adam Jentleson -- who was the former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid.

The kill switch is the Senate filibuster. It allows a minority of senators, 41, to block legislation, since 60 votes are needed to end a filibuster in the 100-member Senate.

No longer is it necessary for someone filibustering to stand on the Senate floor and keep talking until their voice (or bladder) gives out. Now, Jentleson says, all a Senator has to do is indicate that they intend to oppose a bill and, bingo, the majority no longer is in control, a minority is.

Kill Switch is full of fascinating detail about how the filibuster came to be, who has wielded it, and what issues have been targeted for filibusters. But the gist of the book for those, like me, who favor Democrats doing away with the filibuster, is in the opening and closing chapters.

Here's excerpts from those chapters. First, the Introduction.

The filibuster has never been the exclusive property of southern reactionaries; as we will see, it has sometimes been deployed by liberals and progressives, and occasionally to historic effect.

But from its inception to today, the filibuster has mainly served to empower a minority of predominantly white conservatives to override our democratic system when they found themselves outnumbered, blocking progress that thteatened their power, their way of life, and the priorities of their wealthy benefactors, from the slaveholders of the nineteenth century to the conservative billionaires of today.

From John Calhoun, the antebellum father of nullification who argued, on the Senate floor, that slavery was a "positive good," to Richard Russell, the post-World War II puppet master of the Senate who swore that "any southern white man worth a pinch of salt would give his all to maintain white supremacy," to Mitch McConnell in our own time, who declared that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," southern senators invented the filibuster, strengthened it, and developed alternative histories to justify it.

Over two centuries, they were able to shape the Senate and thereby the nation, retrofitting the Framers' vision to give themselves, a factional minority, veto power over every law the nation passes. 

Speaking in grave stentorian tones, and making frequent reference to a tendentious account of the Framers and Senate history, they convinced us that this was the way it was meant to be.

But it was not. The Framers would have abhorred the filibuster. Their vision for the Senate was of a chamber that was thoughtful and deliberative, but where the majority rules. For half a century after the founding of the nation, the Senate operated according to their plan.

Here's the final paragraph of the book in the Conclusion chapter.

To fix the Senate, we must keep in mind that restoring an institution capable of producing intelligent solutions is the goal -- the Framers' vision is a corrective to "traditionalists" today, not the goal itself.

We do not elect senators to bask in pundits' praise for upholding Senate tradition; as this book has shown, most of what passes for "tradition" is in fact myth, invented by people seeking to protect their power from the march of change that has so often threatened it.

Calhoun and his modern acolytes, from Russell to McConnell, destroyed the best things about the Senate -- its deliberative nature, the forum it provided for free and open debate -- and replaced them with gridlock, all while telling us it was for the good of the institution.

The Senate needs to be rescued from its own self-indulgent myths, saved from the twisted, damaging Calhounian thing that it has become, and restored to Madison's model -- a model in which the minority is protected, the majority rules, and the business of the nation moves forward.

I'll end by noting that one surprise in the book for me was Jentleson's debunking of the oft-heard statement that the reason Republicans are favored to have control of the Senate is because small states have the same number of Senators, two, as large states.

Not true. Here's what Jentleson says about this.

Looking at seats by state population, there is no significant small-state bias toward Republicans. To the contrary, it's dead even.

The twenty Senate seats representing the ten smallest states are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with each party holding ten. Wyoming, the smallest state, is deep red, but if you zoom out a little on the list of smallest states, a bunch of blue states are among them, including Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Hawaii.

If you expand the group to the fifteen smallest states, the pattern is the same, with their thirty Senate seats equally divided between the parties at fifteen each. The same pattern holds at the other end of the spectrum: among the ten most populous states, their twenty Senate seats are evenly split between the parties at ten each.

...The fact that small and big states are evenly represented by Democrats and Republicans shows that the dysfunction in the modern Senate does not lie in its built-in bias toward small states. 

Instead, as this half of the book will show, it lies in the way its rules have evolved to give certain groups of people -- as opposed to states -- more power. (There is a sliver lining here, since it would be much easier to change the Senate's rules that to break California into multiple states or carry out other proposals currently circulating -- more of that in the Conclusion.)

...The minority of voters putting Republican senators in office are not representative of a rapidly diversifying America riven by income inequality and stagnant wages. They are predominantly white, anti-choice conservatives serving wealthy interests, whom I will call WWAC's for efficiency's sake.

They are out of step with the direction of the country, and they spend year after year watching their status and power erode. But because the modern Senate empowers them far beyond their numbers, they are consistently able to impose their will on the majority.

Almost 3/4 of downtown Salem trash receptacles to be removed

Sheri Wahrgren, the Downtown Revitalization manager for the City of Salem, wants to get rid of most trash receptacles in the downtown area -- 44 of the 61 currently in use. See:

Download Downtown Trash Receptacle Staff Report

Before we dive deeper into this messy move, let's agree on this: the current trash receptacles are ugly, hard to use, and deserve to be featured in The Museum of Dysfunctional Trash Receptacles -- which I dearly hope exists.

Carole Smith, a downtown resident and property owner, brought my attention to what Smith considers a trash travesty. Never one to mince words, here's how she described this issue to me in an email.

I was looking through the DAB [Downtown Advisory Board] agenda and found a staff report that they want to remove 44 of our 61 downtown garbage cans to save money. More trash on the sidewalk will not save downtown money, it will just make it look worse. No word on other cost savings they can make - like letting staff go. We don’t need all those garbage cans but WE DO need all those staff.

If restaurants customers are the main trash can users, why don’t they increase Parking Tax on restaurants with take out? This just seems like another bone they are throwing to restaurants.  

Janet Taylor hated that merchants refused to maintain the city’s plants in the city’s planters so she had the City give away all our planters (planted and blooming) to Keizer. She replaced them with the most hideous garbage cans and planters she could find. She took away over 80 planters and replaced them with 20 planters.

Now staff wants to do the same with garbage cans. Why should downtown be punished because Janet Taylor picked a dumb, dysfunctional design?

Ugh, this just feels like another nail in downtowns mostly-built coffin. One more nail amongst several. Staff still get their paychecks but what about services for the public who pay their wages, don’t we count?  Why do we need so many staff when they continually cut programs?

To add insult to injury, I told Chuck Bennett years ago that most cities negotiate free downtown garbage pick-up with their haulers when they renew their contract. They get their downtown garbage picked up free. Our city just charges the Parking District.

Hope this riles you up like it did me.

Well, I'm always eager to get riled up by stupid stuff done by the City of Salem. I wouldn't have called this blog Salem Political Snark if I'd wanted it to be a warm and fuzzy paean to what city staff are doing right. 

I agree with Smith that removing almost 3/4 of downtown trash receptacles doesn't mesh with what I've observed about human behavior. Namely, that most people want to do the right thing, but only if it isn't too difficult. 

Having several trash receptacles on every block makes it more likely that someone with something that needs to be thrown away will hang onto it for the short distance to a receptacle. This is the current downtown Salem trash receptacle status, as shown in the staff report.

By contrast, this is the proposed layout.

The map above seems trash receptacle-skimpy, but since this is my first foray into trash receptacle analysis of a downtown, I will admit that my intuitive impression of skimpiness may not reflect the intensive quantitative and qualitative assessment that a problem of this importance deserves. 

I have, however, just devoted five minutes of my steadily declining remaining life time to a Google Images search of "downtown trash receptacles" in hopes this will bolster my campaign for an investigative blogging award.

That search led to me a Buyer's Guide for Trash Receptacles which contains this bit of advice that Sheri Wahrgren obviously hasn't taken to heart.

Bottom line: the more trash receptacles you provide, the less trash you will encounter.

Wow. That makes so much sense. As does the following pieces of advice.

Planning trash collection might not be your favorite topic, but proper organization can make your community clean and safe, leaving a positive first impression on guests. Facilitate successful trash collection with: - Placing the right amount of commercial trash receptacles strategically - Installing eye-catching, colorful decorative trash cans that guests can easily find - Encouraging green habits with recycling receptacles that sort recyclable materials

Eye-catching. Colorful. Decorative. Three words that definitely don't describe the trash receptacles currently in downtown. But it does describe the trash receptacles in Washington D.C.'s Chinatown.