The McCollumn - 10/8

Trouble is brewing

Well, we’ve got trouble, my friends, trouble right here in Opelika.

Certain words are creeping into the vocabulary of downtown merchants and residents, words like “sanitation” and “cleanliness.”

Voices that once pleaded patience now clamor for action and turn to bouts of seething rage.

The situation seems poised to explode and repeated attempts to address the problem at hand seem to fall upon deaf ears both at City Hall and in the private sector.

The problem: the city of Opelika-provided dumpsters located in the parking lot behind the South Railroad buildings.

For weeks, visitors to these dumpsters (myself included, lugging bags of trash from Cottage Café) have been privy to a scene of varying degrees of horror.

The already ill-placed dumpsters, one of which occupies a much-needed parking space, now overflow with boxes and restaurant garbage on an almost daily basis.

Trash is even left sitting in front of the dumpsters quite often, and stays there even more often because the waste management group in charge of picking up those receptacles won’t pick up garbage not within the receptacle. Company policy, I’ve been told.

Blame in this situation is halved, I think, between the city and we, the downtown business community.

The city can and must move the dumpster out of that parking space. There’s room for it to be placed on the grassy interlude where the other one sits.

Parking’s already scarce enough; every space wasted is potential business lost. The city also needs to increase the frequency with which these bins are emptied. Clearly, that could and probably will lead to an increase in the cost of said bins.

That’s where the business owners must come in.

First, I’ll take a page from old Mrs. Goodson’s book, God rest her soul.

Those of us who’ve been downtown a few years know of the tyrannical control that sainted woman had over those dumpsters.

If you didn’t break down your boxes, you’d have an accusatory finger and her hat brim lodged squarely in front of your face.

We broke down our boxes, we acted responsibly, if only to avoid an inquisition.

We’ve lost our courtesy to one another.

It may take an extra second or two, but can we all at least try to break stuff down properly and dispose of garbage in a rational manner.

Don’t leave trash bags by the dumpster.

For that matter, let’s also all be careful of our patrons leaving glass bottles outside as well. I’ve encountered a recent increase in broken beer bottles on my way to work, and that’s never OK.

If simple courtesy does not decrease the necessity for more pickups, then we may need to be willing to find a way and come together to offset some of the cost, since I imagine that’s why the city has been rather lax in arranging more pickups.

It may feel a bit like a kickback, but it may well get the job done.

We’ll just leave the money on the table, then go home and pray for absolution.

I hope it doesn’t come to that, but you never know. We live in a world of infinite possibilities.

All-out war.

Courtesy and kindness.

Good, old-fashioned bribery.

These are our options, downtown.

Stop by and let me know which one you want to do. I’m down for whatever.