6 ms·
why does the local council not employ people to clean the streets?
by ikt 5y ago
why does the local council not employ people to clean the streets?
- gnopgnip 5y agoThey do a pretty good job in the areas where there are tourists and businesses in all but the busiest times. No so much in residential areas.
- macinjosh 5y agoThey do. The government is just ineffective at its job.
- ikt 5y agoIt's very odd, here in Australia they're very effective at it, very rarely do I walk past garbage piles. I guess people in San Francisco just don't care enough to really push the council to solve the problem?
- OJFord 5y agoIsn't it that they're also saying 'it's too expensive to live here, keep taxes low' or 'it's too expensive to live here, I won't, I'll consume things and leave rubbish and them go home [and pay tax] elsewhere'?
- starwind 5y agoThat's what happens when people just vote for their party for local government—politicians don't have good ideas or successful policies cause they don't have to to stay in office
- wolverine876 5y agoHow do local SF elections work? Are they partisan? If so, aren't the primaries where the real action is, often with plenty of choices?
- _dain_ 5y agoit's a one-party state with significant control by a few wealthy local real estate oligarchs.
- sagarm 5y agoSF has ranked choice voting for local seats, no primary. Anyone willing to put an (R) next to their name doesn't have a serious chance, because they're clearly just out of step with the city. In practice elections are often quite competitive between the two major Democratic factions: moderates and progressives. Right now the mayor (Breed), state reps (Weiner, Chiu), and congressional rep (Pelosi) are moderates. The board of sups is 6-3 prog dominated, partially due to Breed becoming mayor and her seat being lost to apartment-tax Preston. There's a shuffle happening right now due to the downstream consequences of Harris becoming VP that will result in Chiu's seat being taken by prog-allied Haney or Campos (no viable moderate is running, I believe). The rest of the progs support Campos though, so Haney is shifting toward moderate positions (e.g. supporting housing approvals) to improve his chances.
- tamaharbor 5y agoYet, the constituents keep re-electing the same people.
- jatone 5y agoyou know what other group of humans are ineffective at their jobs? every... single... one... corporations/government doesn't fucking matter. group of humans working together? inherently inefficient.
- _dain_ 5y agothis is a city that puts up billboards telling junkies how to "safely" shoot up heroin
- tshaddox 5y agoHow are those things related?
- bbbhahah 5y agothis is a city that pays criminals money not to fucking kill people
- blunte 5y agoYou're not going to stop a junkie from shooting up (without a comprehensive, life-changing program). So barring that, you might as well teach them how to be more safe so they don't end up in a hospital spending your tax money for emergency care... or worse, dead somewhere and likewise then consuming public funds to deal with it. [added] Since this is such a controversial topic, I would recommend reading about Portugal's approach to solving drug problems (hint, it has been quite successful(): https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...
- DantesKite 5y agoYou can stop a junkie from shooting up by imprisoning them, or better yet, putting them through drug rehab. Everything else is not a solution and only exacerbates the problem. There's nothing safe about staying addicted to drugs.
- pwthornton 5y agoWait until you find out about drug abuse in prisons.
- blunte 5y agoPutting a junkie in prison will indeed stop them, for the time they are in jail. But once they get out, they will return to the life they know. And then you're back with the original problem, but you've now also spent a ton of money to imprison them. Obviously there's nothing safe about being addicted to drugs. But there are certainly methods of drug use which have wildly varied risk levels. Same for other things - drinking alcohol, eating unhealthy foods, etc. Portugal is the best example of how to tackle the drug problem. There are many articles, but here's one: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...
- refurb 5y agoAnd “steal” union jobs?
- m0llusk 5y agoWhy would you think a serious problem is necessarily simple to solve? Money for maintenance and cleanup is limited. San Francisco has legions of homeless, troubled, and then a big layer of irresponsible rebels on top of all of that. The idea that one of the greatest accumulations of irregulars and undesirables would be simple to clean up after does not correspond at all to the real scale of the problem. How many thousands of unhoused live in your city?
- nbardy 5y agoSan Francisco spends $100k+ per homeless person. We have the resources it’s about how they’re used.