Trash Fee Increase - Statistically Sound, but Politically and Motivation Wise, Who Knows

This chart appeared in today's Laredo Morning Times. It shows that Laredo is paying less than the cities shown for trash pickup, even with the proposed increase.

Are they right in comparing cities like Austin and Brownsville with Laredo.

I really never like these kinds of analysis, because they fail to get to the heart of the matter, which is; "Can the community afford it?".

In this case, the answer is yes, if these trash collection fees are apples to apples numbers.  I do not have the "free" time to dig to that level.

But, I did do a very quick, unscientific, look at the following numbers.  I have listed each cities the percentage of people in the city at or below the poverty level, and the trash pick up bill.

Notice, that Laredo is third highest in the percent of people in poverty.  This simple chart shows that the cities with higher poverty rates have lower trash collection bills with the exception of Brownsville.  Not sure why they are out of whack.   Note, that I have divided the trash rate for bi-weekly pickups in half.

What is not shown here are the recent expenditures by the city to have trash collection done by robot armed trash trucks requiring less labor to operate.  This was supposed to reduce cost through less employees and a reduced risk and cost of injuries to workers.  Where, and how much was that savings?

One man trash truck

Overall, Laredo does not appear to be out of line with it's increase, at least from a simple statistical standpoint.  Politically, and as for motivational reasons, those are different issues, and I wonder if we would really need this increase if our police and fire departments did not consume over 65% of the city budget.

This is the kind of analysis that I would like see when we talk about any pay scale increases for any city employee.  Yet, no one seems to want to take the couple of hours to do it.  So sad that the local media fail in this respect.