Dallas City Council can't see the savings for the branches

Once again, our Dallas City Council has taken the narrowest possible view on an issue, contradicted itself and failed to act in the best interest of the taxpaying and fee-paying citizens of the city. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Somewhere in the City Council offices there is a dispenser that spews out stupid pills and many of our council members take them regularly. How else can you explain their ineptitude.

The agenda item before the City Council today involved installing a computer-based system in the city's sanitation trucks that would allow them to operate far more efficiently and far less expensively. Here's just one way a system like this could help citizens. Suppose, for whatever reason, I fail to get my trash out in my alley on the normal pickup day before the sanitation trucks come by to pick it up. Being the honest, truthful citizen that I am, I, of course, will call 3-1-1- and complain that the garbage folks missed picking up my trash. Because Sanitation Services is all about customer service, it will instruct the driver of my route to go back and pick up my garbage. OK, so far. But that assumes the normal driver of my route is, at the minute he gets the call, the closest driver to my location. It could be that at that precise moment, another driver is only a couple of blocks away and it would be far more efficient, both in time and fuel costs, to send that driver to my location. However, without this system in place, those kind of decisions can't be made.

The agenda item is going to pay for itself very quickly and then begin to save money for Dallas taxpayers. On that question, no one disagrees. However, the City Council, at the behest of District 8 council member Tennell Atkins, who obviously has some private or personal issues with this system that he is too cowardly to come out and explain in the open, the item was deferred for four weeks. I say that about Mr. Atkins because the item originally appeared on a council agenda last November and he moved to have it deferred then. And I am willing to bet the mortgage that when it comes back up again in four weeks he is going to move to have it deferred again. He keeps mumbling about fees and how these fees are unfair to people in his district, yet his own actions are almost guaranteeing those fees will be increased and I hope someone holds him accountable for that fact. More about that later.

Council members asked a lot of questions about this issue but they danced around and failed to ask the single most important question that needed to be asked. They failed to ask how much their delay is going to cost us, the citizens. They failed to ask that because, like I said, they have their own private agendas that are in conflict with our best interests. (I do need to mention here, however, that District 12 council member Ron Natinsky did see the value in this agenda item and spoke out in strongly in favor of its passage, but I fault him for failing to ask the important question as well.)

Here's the deal. Like it or not (and District 14 council member Angela Hunt doesn't like it), the City Council back in September passed a budget that assumed this system would be installed and that we would realize the savings from it. Ms. Hunt criticized City Manager Mary Suhm for introducing a budget that made assumptions before the City Council authorized them and I agree with Ms. Hunt on this. I also recognize the fact that Ms. Hunt made those same arguments at the time the budget was being discussed so she has earned the right to say "I told you so." Problem is, however, the City Council passed that budget. It is in place. So here's the question someone on the Council, if they had the interests of the citizens of Dallas at the top of their agenda, should have asked: "What will be the effect on the budget if we delay this another four weeks or if Mr. Atkins gets his way and this is killed completely?" That's the information they needed to have before they made their vote, yet, no one on thge council sought that information, no one on the council asked that question, no one on the council had our best interests at the top of their agenda.

This brings me back to Mr. Atkins' duplicity. If there is a negative impact on the budget because of this inaction, the money will come from the budget of the Sanitation Department. Guess where it gets most of its money from? The sanitation fees we pay each month in our water bills. So, to make up for it, these fees will have to be raised. So much for Mr. Atkins' caring about fees the people of his district pays. He obviously doesn't.

Ms. Hunt suggests that before we install a system like this, perhaps we ought to cut down the branches that act as obstacles to our sanitation trucks. I have no problem with this, but, I wish Ms. Hunt would simply reverse her priorities. Instead of spending money now so that we might do something later that will save money, why not institute the money-savings program first and then use the money saved to cut down these branches? Doesn't that make more sense, especially in these economic times?

But then no one on our council displays much common sense, least of all my favorite target, District 13's Mitchell Rasansky, who in his typical grandstanding fashion waited until the last minute to unleash Zorro. OK, it wasn't Zorro, but some competing system that begins with the letter X and sounds like Zorro, a system that a quick Google search performed by Mr. Natinsky revealed would cost the city far more than the one proposed. Why doesn't Mr. Rasansky ask these questions before council sessions? The reason is because he really doesn't want his questions answered, he wants to showboat to the rest of the Council on how much he thinks he knows about all these subjects.

Of course, there was some more off-the-subject talk about paying day laborers more than minimum wage, as though these day laborers were actually employees of the City of Dallas, which, of course, they are not. Not to mention that is another example of this irresponsible council trying to spend money instead of saving it.

The whole thing reminds me of the last verse of one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs:
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.
No, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They sing while you slave and I just get bored.
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.