Just as city lawmakers were poised to cater to trash haulers’ plea for relief from laws restricting morning trash truck noise, a band of East Rock neighbors showed up at a public meeting to protect their sleep.
A public hearing at the aldermanic Legislation Committee Monday concerned amending a law to balance the needs of city trash haulers and the residents woken up by clamoring trucks. Trash haulers didn’t show. Neighbors did, and won their case.
Those who live in East Rock have made great gains since the days when they were awoken every week at 3 or 4 a.m. by the sound of beeping, bashing trash trucks.
Neighbors, including Alex Marathas (pictured above at right), worked together to get a law passed restricting the hours of trash pickup to after 7 a.m. Monday to Saturday (Click here for details and background).
The law was passed in June to citizen applause. Then trash haulers caught wind of the restrictions. They lobbied for looser restrictions downtown, where traffic is so heavy at 7 a.m. that trash pickup causes a traffic jam, they argued.
Trash haulers, hospitals and downtown businesses swayed aldermen with their pleas. Special exception should be made downtown, aldermen agreed. Alders recommended easing downtown restrictions to 6 a.m. instead of 7 a.m.
Monday, an amendment proposed easing the rules even further: 6 a.m. in all parts of the city, 4 a.m. downtown.
Residents in the downtown area itself have been quiet — Alderwoman Bitsie Clark reported zero noise complaints concerning trash trucks. Tenants there are used to the noise.
But East Rock neighbors, especially those who live on the fringe of downtown, worry loosening restrictions will give trash haulers more room to encroach on morning sleep. They wrote 30 pages of emails denouncing the proposal, according to Alderman Roland Lemar.
Seven showed up at Monday’s hearing, telling tales of sleepless mornings walking out in the darkness in pajamas to write down the license plate of the offending truck. They said the new law has been the only thing helping them push the truck routes forward to later in the day.
Many more pour in with phone calls to East Rock Aldermen Ed Mattison and Lemar complaining of scofflaw trash trucks.
With such low enforcement, East Rockers were skeptical if easing restrictions downtown would just bring more clamor to their neck of the woods. Lemar worried allowing 4 a.m. pickup on border streets like Trumbull Street would bring trash haulers to East Rock when they’re done.
With such low compliance, they don’t deserve a break, argued Lemar: “Why am I relaxing a restriction for them that they are completely unable to comply with?”
Trash haulers haven’t made a commitment to abide by the law, added Mattison. He urged not just greater enforcement, which the understaffed police department can’t exactly take on on a wide scale, but getting trash haulers on board with plans.
“If they decide that getting these tickets is just a cost of business, then we’re dead!”
No trash haulers attended the meeting. In their absence, aldermen were swayed by neighbors’ words. They voted to keep the restrictions in place: 7 a.m. in most parts of the city, 6 a.m. downtown, instead of the proposed 6 a.m./4 a.m. combo.
And the whip came down on trash haulers with an extra penalty added to a series of escalating punishments: The fourth time a driver’s spotted picking up trash too early, the hauler’s license will be revoked for six months.
The proposal now passes to the full Board of Aldermen, where, predicted Alderwoman Clark, “Trash haulers will be incensed!”
Booya!!
Here's to you guys on behalf of all that live in New Haven and value our sleep!! And thank you for relizing that the steeper fines are needed because they really were not following the rules, maybe now they will!! But now we need to figure out how to make slum lords get there trash picked but regularly because I am tired of picking up trash rolling down my street from an over filled dumbster!! I need a second blue bin to keep up with it!!