by P.D. Lesko Bernie Madoff sold a “sure thing.” He went to prison for life. Single-stream recycling was sold as a “sure thing” by Ann Arbor city staffers, politicos and their cronies. It would double collections and save taxpayers millions. Since its launch in July of 2010, it has, in fact, done neither. According to a draft [...]
by P.D. Lesko Make no mistake. One look at the last three years of audited financial statements of Recycle Ann Arbor, and the company’s losses make it clear that CEO Melinda Uerling was struggling to keep the company, controlled by the Ann Arbor Ecology Center, afloat. Most recently, city staffers went before Council with a [...]
by Pete Nicely It was H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis or some other dead white Anglo Saxon who once sort-of said, “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross.” Or maybe it was Ryan Seacrest who said, “When Lady Gaga shows up at the MTV Video Music Awards, it will [...]
To listen to Michael Garfield, head of the Ecology Center tell the story, Recycle Ann Arbor, which is controlled by Garfield and the Ecology Center, has been the victim of “miscalculation made in the 2010 contract” between the City of Ann Arbor and Recycle Ann Arbor. That’s why RAA needs $1.07 million more from Ann [...]
A2Politico has been consistently critical of the city’s move to single-stream recycling, interviewing and quoting national experts who dubbed the move “environmentally regressive” and a “waste of taxpayer money.” A2Politico questioned the rosy collections projections of city staff, consultants and local politicos who used their support of single-stream recycling in the 2010 City Council and Mayoral [...]
On Tuesday November 16th, I sent an email letter to City Council members, as well as the heads of several local organizations, and to my friends and acquaintances, whom I know care about gardening and composting, concerning city staff’s November 8th recommendation that Council approve the WeCare Organic’s proposal to take over operations of the Ann [...]
AnnArbor.com, as I’ve written before, doesn’t “correct” mistakes or errors in its articles, but rather like the blowsy Uncle who gets caught in a contradiction, AnnArbor.com “updates” its articles on the fly, as it were. The result is that pieces are revised throughout the day on the site. Unfortunately, with a bounce rate around 70 [...]
In response to my entry about the City Council move to switch Ann Arbor over to single stream recycling, I had a conversation with a former worker at the city’s material collections facility who pointed out something very important to me: the ideal recycling program contracts and, eventually, becomes unnecessary. Why? Because the ultimate goal [...]
A2P Notes: Looking for the back story? I wrote about single stream recycling first on January 28, 2010. To read that entry titled “The Politics of Unscrambling Eggs: Hieftje, Hohnke and Teall Push $6.4 Million For Environmentally Regressive Single Stream Recycling,” click here. It has often been disturbing to follow the money, connections and political [...]
