Ream’s mismanagement results in higher trash fees and layoffs in Santa Ana

The Santa Ana City Council “voted 7-0 on Monday night to increase the amount it charges for trash service at apartment complexes and businesses,” according to the O.C. Register.

Don’t the poorest people in our city live in apartment complexes?  And aren’t our businesses already hurting due to the Bush Depression?

Santa Ana City Manager Dave Ream also announced that he is going to lay off 45 workers.  Will he lay off any of his overpaid administrators?  Do we really need BOTH Jill Arthur AND Catherine Standiford? Which one of them is in charge of changing Ream’s Depends?

And why hasn’t Ream apologized for conniving the idiots on our City Council to vote for a pension spike last year?

In related news, “Usual Suspect” Tim Rush spoke up at the City Council meeting on Monday.  He went there to scream about poor people picking through his trash.  Nice.  People are desperate enough to pick through his trash and he wants them to get busted?  Santa Ana Councilwoman Claudia Alvarez told him to take a hike, but of course Mayor Miguel Pulido and perennially heartless Councilman Carlos Bustamante railed against those damned trash-pickers.  I am sure the rest of the Usual Suspects were thrilled to have Pulido’s and Busty’s support.

The trash rate hikes are just the tip of the iceberg.  Standiford was hired as an Assistant City Manager because of her experience in raising fees at other cities.

My advice, if your trash rates are going up, is that you start recycling your trash, such as aluminum cans and newspapers, and getting money for that material, to offset the higher rates.  Or give them to the poor folks that are picking through Rush’s trash.  This will also put the screws to the city and to the city’s trash hauler, Waste Management.

And brace yourselves.  More fee increases are surely on the way…

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"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.