Public Opinion 2002
Back in 2002, Ramsey and Washington Counties looked at their trash systems and considered whether to move to county-wide organized collection. Their study resulted in a very detailed report, which you can still access on a page of the Ramsey County website.
I vaguely remember when this was going on. I don't remember ever reading anything about it from the county. I do remember noticing some expensive, glossy propaganda from an industry group, which in retrospect must have been NSWMA, warning about the terrible things that would supposedly happen if I didn't take action to stop it.
While I don't recall sending any comments to the county, they were keeping track of all the input they received. As with our present situation, it needs to be remembered that the waste haulers' group was waging a large and well-financed PR campaign to promote their self-interested view, without any counterbalancing public-interest advocacy group that I'm aware of on the other side. (If there was such a group, I don't remember hearing from them.) The county did send out a questionnaire to residents, in order to get a larger range of responses, but it's likely that a fair number of responses were motivated and biased by the NSWMA efforts.
The appendix of the report that discusses "public engagement" analyzes the feedback received by the county over the course of their study. With a total of 7,393 messages received (far more than I've gotten), the breakdown was: 37% strongly supported or leaned toward supporting organized collection; 26% were undecided, felt they needed more information, or did not state an opinion; 36% were strongly opposed to or leaning against organized collection.
I vaguely remember when this was going on. I don't remember ever reading anything about it from the county. I do remember noticing some expensive, glossy propaganda from an industry group, which in retrospect must have been NSWMA, warning about the terrible things that would supposedly happen if I didn't take action to stop it.
While I don't recall sending any comments to the county, they were keeping track of all the input they received. As with our present situation, it needs to be remembered that the waste haulers' group was waging a large and well-financed PR campaign to promote their self-interested view, without any counterbalancing public-interest advocacy group that I'm aware of on the other side. (If there was such a group, I don't remember hearing from them.) The county did send out a questionnaire to residents, in order to get a larger range of responses, but it's likely that a fair number of responses were motivated and biased by the NSWMA efforts.
The appendix of the report that discusses "public engagement" analyzes the feedback received by the county over the course of their study. With a total of 7,393 messages received (far more than I've gotten), the breakdown was: 37% strongly supported or leaned toward supporting organized collection; 26% were undecided, felt they needed more information, or did not state an opinion; 36% were strongly opposed to or leaning against organized collection.
Labels: organized collection
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