Honolulu Lite
I'm trying to imagine people in one of the crummier neighborhoods of New Delhi, and there are plenty to choose from, complaining that the people who pick up their trash in the morning are too noisy. Bainum’s garbage idea
rightly trashedIt's hard to imagine, because if you've ever seen photos of the places where Mother Teresa used to hang out, getting garbage men to pick up the trash quietly wasn't the problem. Getting anyone to pick up the trash was.
In fact, probably 90 percent of the earth's population wishes for regular garbage collection. They wouldn't care if the trash was picked up at 3 in the morning by rubbish workers accompanied by a brass band. It's better to lose a little sleep than have rats playing hide-and-seek in your shorts all night.
Any country on the globe, including most of the less photogenic Third World variety, would kill to have a professional crack team of rubbish collectors like we have in Honolulu picking up their garbage.
So what does that say about City Councilman Duke Bainum and his constituency of pathetic whiners who complain that trash collectors make too much noise in the morning? Yes, I've been awakened by a garbage truck screeching in the pre-dawn darkness, its air brakes hissing and the boys out there giving the garbage cans a thorough knocking about. When that happens I think, "God bless 'em." And I'm glad it's not me out there busting my hump at such an ungodly hour picking up everyone else's disgusting waste.
But Bainum, a normally rational fellow with a pretty good feel for right and wrong, apparently was pestered by some of his more fussy supporters to try to keep garbage collectors from working before 6 a.m. This is sadly too typical of the City Hall credo: "If it's not broke, break it."
There are all kinds of things that don't work well in Honolulu -- the aging, leaking sewer lines come to mind. One sewer line in Kaneohe has been leaking 5 gallons of untreated waste, better known as "people poop," into Kaneohe Bay for a year! Where were Duke and his buddies on that little matter?
Instead, focusing more on the affluent than the effluent, Bainum decided to "fix" the one city department, rubbish collection, that historically has done the best job.
Luckily, his City Council colleagues were more appreciative of garbage collectors -- and, not coincidentally, their union -- and tossed Bainum's odious proposal into the rubbish bin where it belonged.
It's lucky for Bainum that Mayor Jeremy Harris decided to stay in office. Bainum wanted to be the next mayor. He would have had a jolly time trying to get votes after the rubbish workers went on strike, garbage piled up in the streets and rats began organizing games of hide-and-seek.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com