Unpopular policy trashed

It’s not too often that the average citizen takes on City Hall and wins.

Gina McKenzie, a real estate agent living at Corbin Park, and her neighbors launched an aggressive effort a year ago to combat a decision to switch garbage pickups from the alleys behind their homes to their front curbs.

The change was implemented for thousands of residents across the city whose alleys were too narrow to accommodate a set of large new automated garbage trucks.

McKenzie and her Corbin Park neighbors fought the change with a tenacity that couldn’t be ignored.

Earlier this week, City Hall announced that it is reversing the policy adopted in 2007 to require some 2,500-plus households to haul their trash to the street for weekly pickups. The city is purchasing new, smaller garbage trucks that can safely maneuver in alleyways with tighter clearances, including historic areas like Corbin Park.

In an interview this week, McKenzie was conciliatory. “It’s nice to try to find a win-win situation, and that’s what happened here,” she said.

There is a saying that all politics is local. When it comes to municipal garbage service, you can’t get any more local than that.

The decision to move garbage pickup from alleys to streets in some neighborhoods not only created hardships for able-bodied residents unprepared for the change, but also posed a serious problem for elderly and disabled persons, although the city sought to have a special pick-up system for people who could not haul their trash receptacles from back to front each week.

The change also came at a critical juncture in the politics of the city.

Appointed former Mayor Dennis Hession was seeking election to a seat he occupied by virtue of the citizen recall of Mayor Jim West two years earlier. He was appointed to the mayor’s job by the City Council and was up against a strong challenge from then-Councilwoman Mary Verner. Both were facing a public that felt empowered by the effort two years earlier to clean up things at City Hall.

“The neighborhood was aroused, deployed,” McKenzie said. “It affected them at a basic level.”

Hession was summoned to meetings with angry Corbin Park residents, who mounted a campaign against him. The garbage-inspired campaign spread its tentacles across the city and became a contributing factor in Hession’s loss to Verner last fall.

As an indication of the potency of garbage politics, Monday’s press release from City Hall on the return of alley pickup to affected neighborhoods was e-mailed with a message line that read, “Mayor announces return to alley garbage pickup for 2,500 households.”

Savoring the victory, McKenzie declined to point blame. She said the people who run the Solid Waste Department probably had good reasons for their mistaken moves. “Maybe there was a special going on giant trucks,” she said.