I have lived in four different states and six different cities. I always count on my taxes providing libraries as well as swimmimg pools and parks for citizens. Leaf pick-up is something that is not necessary, streets are loaded with leaves way before time for them to be collected, and the streets look like a mess. Nuff said

I have never understood why we started the leaf pickup program in the first place. Residents pay no attention to when their neighborhood's leaves are supposed to be picked up and frequently the crew can't seen to get a whole neighborhood done during the scheduled time anyway. It's just resulted in our streets being piled with wet slippery leaves most of the fall which block parking spaces and cause a hazard.

Of all the jobs involved in maintaining a home, raking and bagging leaves is one of the EASIEST! It just takes a little more time to bag them once I've already raked (or mowed) the leaves. Besides, then I can do it at my convenience rather than waiting til the week before leaf pickup trucks come. Debbie is right...many people don't pay attention to when the leaves are supposed to be picked up, so they put them in the street whenever, so the leaves either blow into other yards or become a slippery mess. We just have to make the change to save the $ and then work hard to get the word out to our neighbors. Taxes should be used to pay for things we need or enjoy and couldn't provide for ourselves...like libraries, pools, parks and public safety.

Can't we just admit Mayor Turd Reilly is in over his small head

It is interesting the 95% number that is thrown out there by the city. If the people knew of much money we could save tax payers each year I do believe 95% of Dearborn residents would be ok with removing the Leaf Removal from our city services. As for enforcing it and making people aware of the change, all it takes is a little time and effort on the citys part. Sending out notices to each resident and spreading the word about the change would be effective enough. We are all apart of Dearborn and this city is so close and people are involved with the city. We also have a New paper that many folks read, print it in there. Enforcing this to ensure everyone is bagging leafs would just be like enforcing any other ordinance in Dearborn, we have ordianace personal enforcing, send them out to do there jobs! Yes, it may take time and effort but that is something the city needs to do and it is worth the time and effort right? $400,000......... Lets theink about the positives of this, we could save our pools and libraries, which means we can save our children in Dearborn. Lets not forget our kids our the furture of Dearborn, if we them out of the equation, what will be the result? Gangs, kids dropping out of school, crime rate goes up, kids dying....sounds familiar? Detroit....Lets be smart about this Dearborn City Counsel members, lets save our city before it is too late...

We can use volunteers (especially baby boomers and retirees) to help staff and , as a result, reduce costs and help save the pools and libraries.

Finding someone with the heavy equipment to move tons of leaves is a different matter. Dearborn has lots of trees, most of them mature trees, one of the pluses of living in Dearborn. I guess we can all invest in leaf mulchers, and grind them up into little bits, small enough to run in gutters. Perhaps Dearborn could invest in a few 'mulchers' and let residents borrow them to shovel their leaves into. Last year, our street had stacks of leaves higher than cars, on both sides, almost making the road impassable. How many bags does it take to fill a pile the size of a mini-van.? I would rather at least have the option of calling the city and paying a fee for the service to have the leaves removed. That way, those with few leaves are not supporting the costs to remove those folk with many leaves Filling 2 to 3 hundred leaf bags is just not going to happen with many residents. Is this a service like educating our children? All contribute to the cause, even if you have less or no children, and ditto for leaves? Dearborn will need the heavy equipment on a permanent basis anyway to remove snow, and leaves on public areas, so it is really a matter of either sharing the cost of removal citywide for the good of the city, or the city charging as a service to residents on an individual or block basis.

I think it is way past time for the City Council to realize that they can no longer afford to pay for city workers to pick up leaves from the street. Really you pay Republic Service to pick them up if they are bagged. Why pay twice? Come on in out of the past , if you can save $400,000 a year by doing away with this program and use the money to keep some of if not all of our libraries open then there should be no question ELIMINATE the program !!! Then get on with rebuilding our city.

Lets see...keeping pools and libraries open on one hand and leaves in the street on the other. Good grief! The really dumb part is that the leave clean up in the street is redundant. We currently have leaves picked up in paper bags and from cans with the proper label on them, so why is this suddenly a big deal? In the comments it states, "Total costs for the service in 2010–which allows residents to put their leaves into the street for the city to bag and remove–were nearly $600,000 including labor, equipment and disposal. Szczygiel explained that by requiring residents to bag their own leaves and have Republic Services pick them up with other trash would save the city $400,000 a year without requiring a heftier contract with Republic, which makes up the remaining $200,000." It has not been that long that residents have been able to put them into the street for removal. 'Training' shouldn't be that big of a deal with proper information. The leaves in the street are messy, block drainage when it rains and make the neighborhoods look bad. And they don't always get picked up now as scheduled and get left in the gutter by the city, so why is it a big issue if residents goof up and put them out there till they are 'trained' to do otherwise? Our pools and libraries are more important for our residents!!

Concerned.... Do you live in an apt or something? With thousands of extra bags of leaves, you can bet that Republic Service will expect a surcharge of close to $400,000 paid from the city to handle all the extra work. So , one way or another, the city will pay to have the leaves removed , unless, of course, they (the city) charge residents a fee for removal of leaves. If the city charges a fee, residents expect to have a say in when that service would be performed. We can all hire private services to remove leaves as well. Those private services would hire more folk, which means more jobs for Dearborn, and , the State of Michigan, and ulitimately, the country. We could, thru leaf removal, be the spark that revives the US economy, and all without Federal stimulus money . The potential consequences are huge!

Bagging the leaves and having them picked up weekly or biweekly would elimate the "van high" piles of leaves on the streets. Plus it would be guarteened to be picked up as where the city sometimes can not do it all in a week due to lay offs. This is a large amount of money we are talking about, lets be realistic, do we allow ourselves to shut the libraries and pools down so we do not have to bag up some leaves a few months a year? Think about our children in this city, they are the future and they are the ones mostly impacted by this.

Speaking of fees for services, such as removal of leaves, the libraries and pools could also institute a fee structure to become more self-supporting. If you like to swim, then pay for it. If you like to play hockey, pay a little more for it. Ditto if you like to read and end up borrowing a book.
However, before we do this, there are other ways to reduce costs.
There are hundreds of thousands of dollars that can be saved in the budget to cover leaves, pools, libraries, etc. Look at the proposed budget for Dearborn, around 300 pages. Find it here. www.kristyn4council.wordpress.com. Just in the first 4 pages, dealing with the 19th Dist. court, having the 19th district court in Dearborn pay 20% of their health care costs would save tens of thousands. Ditto for justification costs, the practice where, if your spouse already has good health care coverage , somehow , you are 'justified' to receive a payment to make up for what the city is not paying toward your healthcare costs since you are covered by your spouse. In the private sector, that was stopped decades ago. Look elsewhere on Patch where I have listed other savings totalling nearly $280 thousand, and that is in the first 4 pages.

Concerned,

Providing jobs and stimulating the economy is serious business. Like you, I am in my mid sixties, have a big tree in the back yard, plus another 15 or so big trees on or surrounding my lot. They produce plenty of leaves. I have no problem being responsible for the leaves on my property, just don't give me a hassle if I decide to start a compost pile in the backyard instead of trekking them to the street . How else to get rid of them without cost? In the past, we could burn leaves. Perhaps one solution is to turn the leaves into compressed leaf logs, (remember the paper log devices when we used to have newspapers?) and burn them in city approved portable fireplaces. Most blocks already have these for block parties anyway, so costs will stay low. Of course, if you don't like the pleasant aroma of burning leaves, or your neighbor doesn't, there could be issues. The fire dept would be getting some more business, as some folk are not real handy with combining common sense and burning leaves outside. Of course, if you have a working inside fireplace, then you kill two birds with one stone, warmth and leaf removal at the same time. Neighbors may argue over who gets the leaves, ever notice how fast tree debris disappears? However, bottom line, the budget has plenty of fat left on it for trimming to cover costs of leaves, libraries, and pools. Have a look here and do some trimming.
www.kristyn4council.wordpress.com.

Why does the mayor continue to subsidize Arab Festival, Homecoming, Memorial Day Parade, and then turn around and say "Sorry kids, no outdoor recreation for you because I have campaigning to do". This pool closure is not a financial decision. It is a matter of priorities. Recreation is a priority for citizens, and being seen in a parade is a priority for Turd Reilly. There are significant fees charged to the users of the pools, and their are many any volunteers who have done work to improve these pools. Turd Reilly continually discounts and minimizes the work of these citizen volunteers because he believes in big government. Mayor Mc Cheese wants to collect his $160,000 paycheck, drive his new Ford Flex paid by the taxpayers, bellow incoherently about Terry Jones, and Waddell his corpulent body down Michigan Ave in a parade. What he does not want to do is work, be held accountable, or improve efficiencies in city government. These financial problems did not occur overnight. Jack Jr. Was city council president foe twenty years while the city grew more corrupt and inefficient. He was asleep at the switch and now his first answer to this crisis is a 100,000 cut to plug a twenty million hole. No wonder why this city is as bad off as it is. The only person who has benefitted from this mayors leadership besides old country buffet, himself, John Cascardo, Marc Guido, Andy Pizzino, and la Shish was Terry Jones.

Frank, the devil is in the details. The mayor is not subsidizing the events mentioned to the same degree as in the past.
The Arab Festival, Homoming, Memorial Day Parade are all Dearborn traditions that are a part of Dearborn's heritage.
For many folk, that is their recreation. The pools are not going to close, we will find volunteers, or service fees to keep them open. We will find 'fat' in the proposed budget that has not been addressed as yet since the details have been known just a short time on-line... look here..www.kristyn4council.wordpress.com.

Perhaps you could find some time to review the numbers, and make some suggested cuts from 'real data'. Then show up at a meeting and ask for some answers. Been there, done that. The council are just folk, and cannot read your mind. They probably don't read this thread, although we both feel they should. Look at Kristen's blog and let's decide how to implement some changes. Gov Snyder is changing MI for the good, let's change Dearborn for the good.

Dwelling on the past solves nothing. Granholm did nothing for MI, and nothing for Dearborn, otherwise we would not be in this situation. What has Dingell done for Dearborn lately? We have to be proactive, and that means presenting facts, not name-calling. Give me some facts Frank that we can toss into a meeting and get 'cost-cutting'. An obvious one is 'justification' costs on page 3 of the 19th dist. court. Ok, now it's your turn for one.