I did my initial rant here. Did you know that our new Recycling Center is now going to have a firing range (supposed to be for law enforcement but why stop there – if the taxpayers are paying for the facility, why not the rest of us?), and a boat storage area (probably for the Town’s Fire Boat, but if the taxpayers are paying for the facility, why not the rest of us?).
So, what was the outcome of my visible unhappiness? That said, a lot of my ire was focused on two things:
- Why the bait and switch – pay for a new Transfer Station and get rewarded for a MANDATORY Recycle Station?
- Why the high penalization rate for not specifically following the Town’s recycling rules ($100, $500, and then $1,000 thereafter for EACH “violation”).
As I noted, I missed getting my suggestions in as to “tiering” levels for incentivizing people TO recycle instead of penalizing them FOR NOT recycling (correctly). But one thing that did happen is that the overly ham-fisted confiscatory “fiscal lashings” have been removed as you can see here on the updated ordinance. No more penalty for screwing up a first, second, or third (or more) times in packaging up your trash/recyclables so as to make their lives easier.
And from my position, that’s really what this is really all about – dragooning all the households in Gilford for FREE to do the work. With making it MANDATORY, our labor is being taken away involuntarily and becoming unpaid workers for the town.
We authorized the spending of the money in the petition warrants in 2017 – 2019. We DIDN’T authorize putting shackles on ourselves – but that’s what the Town, when you strip away everything else that is just flowery and nice sounding. And as to that shocked look on your face of “Is Skip really going to bring up the “S” word???? Well, regardless of all of the nice pretty words to the contrary, when you force people work for you for free and against their will (and make NO mistake, I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS and I don’t believe I should be forced, as a Free Citizen, to do this), it is involuntary servitude. I don’t care if it is every day, 14 hours a day or a couple of hours per week, the Principle is the same – we should never enable others to make us do ANYTHING for free. If you want to work for free (in this case, recycle), knock yourself out. Have fun at it. Puff out your chest and show your virtue-signaling (aka, “what a good boy am I!”).
Just like having to kowtow to the contagion of gender dysphoria / transgenderism, don’t force me to take part. That’s wrong and evil. Suggest, sure. Try to cajole me, fine. Try to debate me on it (good luck with that!), knock yourself out. FORCE me and like the Second Amendment Sanctuary Cities / Towns / Counties springing up all over the country, “I will not comply”.
Plain and simple when the pedal hits the metal, we PAY town employees to do work that we don’t want to do. I don’t want to run a snowplow, fix the roads, be a cop, put out fires, run a library, or teach (well, maybe that as I DO like teaching). So, you want me to do the work? Pay me to do your work. And make no mistake, it IS your work. I wouldn’t do it if you weren’t forcing me to do it.
And I am wondering how much of that recyclable material is still going to end up in the landfill. And make no mistake, I’ll put putting in RSA 91:A demands from time to time so the Town had better keep its paperwork (contracts, manifests, packing slips, authorization slips, payments, et al) in good order. But I digress…a bit.
Instead of the fines, they’ve decided on a philosophy of “education” with a dash of “leniency” in the beginning where employees will gently instruct us on the “right vs wrong” for us to handle our trash for Scott Dunn’s (the Town Administrator) benefit to make this thing look good (after all, the estimated $99K of revenue ain’t gonna get the job done to get it to pay for itself).
So I should, given that I’ve gone long again, take that as a win. So, I shall.
But there’s more to come.