Phil’s truck got rummaged!!

Well, after the run-in I had with the bum who was stealing out of recycling bins up and down my street last week, I heard from my good neighbor Phil today that his pick up truck had been “rummaged.” Parked in his driveway, more than 90 feet off the public street onto his property, surrounded by security lights. He said it must have been late in the night, because he and his wife like to sit out in their backyard until at least 11 pm. 

Allowing these freaks to walk through our neighborhoods on trash day, going through our stuff –  like I said before, it doesn’t stop with our trash/recycling bins, it leads to our cars and our sheds and right into our homes. They watch and learn, they know who goes to bed early, and who gets up early. They know when we got to work, and when our kids go to school. They know who is gone all day.  They know more about us than our neighbors. They know we leave what amounts to money in our recycling bins, and that Waste Management doesn’t pick them up until after noon. In my neighborhood it’s about 2:30 pm. Mayor Morgan told me they don’t get his recycling bin until after 3 pm. 

Here’s a solution for those who have created the problem – Waste Management needs to switch the pick-ups – start picking up recycling first, come back in the afternoon for the trash. I take my bins out by 8 am, the trash truck comes by 9:30. After the trucks have got everybody’s trash bins, they head back to Chico as recycling trucks. I’m not asking WM to buy more trucks – although that would have seemed reasonable given they were more than doubling their customer base. I’m just asking, pick up the recycling first, you are causing a crime problem. 

Recology had separate trucks, and both my bins were empty by 11:30. Make that 11:27 – I saw them, every week, and you could set your clock by the recycling truck. 

The mayor expressed his total lack of concern, telling me he liked the late pick-up because sometimes he forgot to put his bins out in the morning. 

Sean Morgan should get a button on his mouth, with a 5 second delay and a  team of experts that get to decide whether each remark should be uttered or flushed. He’s his own worst enemy – actually, his mouth, which seems to be completely disconnected from his brain, is his own worst enemy.

It’s frustrating talking to a person so entitled and yet so stupid. I would like to ask him – “Sean, how far would a bum make it up your street? At all? Before Peter Durfee or some other member of Chico PD was right up his/her ass?”  But he’s got a short attention span – he launched into an attack on Mark Herrera without answering the questions I’d already asked him. 

They come through my neighborhood by way of the city bike trail, the road to Bumville – also known as Bidwell Park. 

They’re also being allowed to camp at the “parklet” there where Pine and Cypress turn into Mulberry, at Little Chico Creek. People laying with all their garbage on the (finally) mowed grass. The garbage piles again line the creek, right behind the new low-income housing facing on Olive. Just a few blocks down, at Mulberry and 20th, there sits the old Victor building, site of a neat little landscape business, with freshly painted over tags every day, windows smashed out and boarded, weeds growing waste high all the way around. Up and down 20th and on toward Park, you see bums camped out between bushes all along the sidewalks. Garbage everywhere. Where’s code enforcement? 

But if a bum scratches a tag into the window of your Downtown business and you don’t get it replaced fast enough, Chico code enforcement chief of flatulence Leo DePaola will hit you with $180 fine. Where do those fines go? Right into DePaola’s back pocket? I’m just asking. 

Where’s the plan here? Who the hell is in charge? 

Ask a bum.