To Bag, or Not to Bag

Many of us were happy to see Public Works Commissioner Jason Golub promptly modify the Council’s recently adopted rule that henceforth all leaves and yard debris will have to be bagged or otherwise containerized. That would have been especially burdensome to those of us who live in neighborhoods that are blessed with an abundance of large healthy trees, like Geyser Crest, and almost certainly would have encouraged the cutting down of more of those trees, contrary to the city’s own “Re-Tree Saratoga” program. We complained and were in the process of getting up a petition when Commissioner Golub announced a reprieve for the peak leaf-dropping season of mid-October to mid-November. Whew! Now if he will go just one step further and allow a similar reprieve for spring clean-up season, when the burden can be nearly as great, especially for those who didn’t manage to finish the job the previous fall. Think especially of those citizens (like me) with creaky backs and knees having to hunch and bend to pack all those leaves and branches into bags! We admire the machines that so efficiently scoop up those leaves and dump them into waiting trucks, and we are grateful to those who man the machines. May they continue their good work for a couple of weeks along about mid-March. 

– Carl Strock