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courtesy of ‘bhrome’
Is Mayor Fenty looking to go back on his word, regarding the bag tax? If you may recall, the 5-cent plastic bag tax was supposed to fund cleanup efforts on the Anacostia Waterfront, and only that. However, according to the Tax Foundation, Mayor Fenty wants to use that money for street-sweeping budgets, instead of the general fund.
C’mon now, Mr. Mayor, I’m pretty sure that’s not what you said the tax was for. I know that times are tight, budgetarily, but this is just silly.
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
Wait, a tax being used for something other than its intended purpose?
Street sweeping actually helps clean up waterways. When it rains all that dirt, grime, oil, and trash on the roads washes into the storm sewers and out into our streams, rivers, and eventually the bay and the ocean.
Please… also file under stupid, giving the “meter maids” Segways to ride around on… now if there’s any a population that needs to walk off a few… it’d be them… talk about a waste of money and allowing the ever so health conscious DC Mayor to be somewhat hippocritical
By using the money generated by the bag fee for anything other than its intended purpose, Mayor Fenty has betrayed the trust of DC residents who have done their part to reduce reliance on plastic bags. By shifting the funds to street sweeping, he is using the money dedicated to the cleanup and restoration of the Anacostia River for a city service that should be paid out of the general fund. I know budgets are tight, but if residents can’t have faith in the intentions of efforts to reduce pollution in this critical watershed, support in the future will be hard to come by. So many organizations, including the Surfrider Foundation, worked tirelessly to help the bag fee some to fruition-let the funds be used in the manner they were intended!