Trash Pickup Has Down Side

My hat is off to J. W. Curtiss of Sylmar for his (her) letter to the editor regarding the new trash collection in that area. If we were not experiencing the same extremely irritating situation ourselves, I would have sworn I was reading an article by Erma Bombeck.

The expensive booklets and instruction sheet certainly could have been condensed into one had not the writer been compelled to be so repetitious. He might then have had room to casually mention alleys, where our trash has always been picked up before.

So, we have about half of us following the writer’s instructions to place our trash containers against the curb in front of the house while the other half continues to use the alley. I guess it really doesn’t matter, it’s been sitting out there for three days; no one has shown up, to pick it up. I also don’t like the prospect of having our alley fence nudged each week by the “arms” that pick up the 60-gallon trash containers.

Now, this is without a doubt our major gripe--lawn, garden, yard and tree trimmings. We have a corner lot with parkways, hedges covering all chain-link fences and eight very large trees. My husband is just ecstatic at the prospect of loading up the trunk of his car every week and making several trips to Sun Valley to dump this stuff--on Sunday, his only day off.

Of course, we could always rent a U-Haul and make only one trip. Do you think the city would reimburse us the cost of a weekly trailer, or possibly lower our trash hauling fees since we’re supposed to haul away nearly half of it ourselves?

In closing, it seems only too obvious that the majority of people are not going to be making a weekly visit(s) to the dump.

JANET MARIE BEAN, Mission Hills. Mills is resident council president at the Casitas Care Center.