Annie Cooper is 70 and when you make it to that age, it is your job to shit on everyone that hasn’t made it there by being as grumpy and annoying as possible, always finding a way to make every little thing in to a slight against you personally. That’s gotta be a great feeling, and we can’t wait until we graduate to that lofty position. Back to Annie though, she’s mad because the city is charging her $11/month more for trash pickup and the addition of recycling dumpsters. So mad, she’s suing the city, and pissing off her Alderman who seems completely confused by the whole thing.
Oh and since she’s 70 and everything little slight is blown out of proportion, she’s already pulling the race card.
Cooper thinks the city’s not providing enough trash and recycling bins in her neighborhood, north St. Louis’s 22nd Ward. And yet she’s still being charged the new $11-per-month trash fee.
The city is providing such services, Cooper said, to residents in wealthier — and whiter — wards.
Cooper said she took a ride recently through the Central West End, Soulard and south St. Louis. “They have so many trash bins, it made me sick. It made me hurt,” she said. Her entire block is serviced, she said, by trash bins only at the ends of the streets.
Ok, maybe on the surface this looks bad. We’re all pretty aware of the city government’s plot to not allow black people to recycle things, but let’s be fair and see what the city has to say…
In the meantime, Ward 22 Alderman Jeffrey Boyd is incensed. He used the trash funds to put cameras up in alleys and combat illegal dumping — a far worse problem, he said. He’ll get alleyway recycling bins when the city has an education program for residents — no use putting them in if residents aren’t sure how to correctly use them.
We’re not usually in the business of patting city officials on the back, but frankly, that sounds like a pretty well thought out plan and response. Cameras in North City do sound like a better option than a few extra recycling bins that, as he eluded to, are just going to be trashed anyway. Also, we would imagine that if she’s right and there are actually more bins in the Central West End, it’s probably because it’s far more densely populated than the area in North City she lives in. In fact…
…there are only three houses on Cooper’s side of the street, he said. And just two are occupied.
Case closed! Doesn’t matter though, the crazy old lady is still going to get her very own recycling bin near her house according to Boyd, which once again proves that if you bitch enough, someone will cave and give you what you want. It works for returning that broken VCR to Wal-Mart and it works for sex…yup sex. It took a few tries, but eventually she took our money.
Cooper’s not going to win completely though. The city will now turn the camera on her street corner ever so slightly. You know what happens to North City houses in the surveillance camera’s blind spot? Bad things man…things way worse than mixing recyclables in with common refuse.
via STLToday
