A run-in with New York's mayor and the Environmental Control Board
I was in my tux on the way to the Investor Relations Magazine US Awards and, despairing of a cab from Wall Street, I took the subway in the hopes of being mistaken for a waiter on my way to work rather than a toff whose Rolls had broken down.
Waiting on the platform at City Hall station, I heard a voice say to me, 'You don't look like you're coming from work!' I looked around to find Hizzoner Mike Bloomberg with his entourage. He had decided to take the subway and beat traffic. 'Hey, if you weren't using the limo, you could have lent it to me,' I riposted, pleased and impressed with the new mayoral regime.
The warm glow of approbation for city government did not last long, however. A month later, I got a letter from New York's Environmental Control Board informing me that I had to pay a fine of $150 because I had not paid the earlier penalty of $80 nor answered the original summons. I was intrigued. This was of course the first I had heard of either complaint or penalty.
I stood on my front step scanning the letter to see what I was accused of. 'Use of litter bin,' it said. Now I was even more intrigued. The area the summons referenced was the Fulton Street Fish Market. People only use the litter bins there when the street and sidewalk are already full or overflowing.
In a heavily regulated city like New York that makes Brezhnev's Moscow seem like an anarchistic hippy commune, I need a permit to show I've taken an approved course in litter bin usage, I thought.
It seemed not. I went down the steps, climbing over empty fish cartons, discarded Styrofoam and shredded plastic packing material, kicking aside the dead fish and skirting panniers of decaying crabs. The owner of the local Irish bar was clearing his corner and saw my perplexed expression. I showed him the letter. He laughed. 'Is your New York Times still being stolen?' he asked. 'After they've read it they must be shovin' it in the bin there.' It seemed plausible. My address on a copy of the Times in a litter bin could have inculpated me for failing to recycle.
I drafted a reply to the environment cops, commending them for their educational fervor in fining me a $150 for not reading the Times. I also applauded the inspector for his zeal in nosing around in litter bins - not my profession of choice.
Indeed, I added, I could understand that the imperfect sense of smell that had enabled him to over-sniff, as it were, the dead fish around the street would make him the perfect man to poke his nose in our local litter bins. However, bearing in mind that I had not had the original summons, perhaps a solemn promise to go with the local flow and put my garbage directly on the floor and never use a litter bin again would impel the court to drop the fine.
Before I sent my response, a second letter arrived that was dated three weeks after the first. It was then I realized that, like the pre-crime cops in Minority Report, New York City had conquered time. This letter warned that I would have to pay a penalty of $150 if I did not immediately pay $80. I now await a third letter specifying what it is that I was supposed to have done in the first place.
It seems an imaginative way to inculcate civic virtue. First you impose the penalty and let the malefactor rot for a while, and then you send the first verdict. And only once the perpetrator has really accepted ownership of the concept of recycling, do you tell him or her what he or she has done.
On the other hand, it made me think about recycling. As much out of civic sensibility as threat of penalty, I do my bit. Each time I finish with a bottle or a food can, I wash it as instructed and send it for recycling. So during a drought, I use scarce water heated with fossil fuels and wash things with various petrochemical based detergents that probably end up in the marine food chain.
Then, on one of those mornings when my newspaper reached me, I read that Mayor Bloomberg wants to curtail the recycling concept because it costs a lot of money. So, in the end, it seems no-one wants New York's recyclables. Of course, he has it the wrong way round. Keep up the recycling but cut the cost: recycle the environmental inspectors into sewer maintenance workers - a job for which their tunnel vision and insensitivity to smell so eminently qualifies them.
The Speculator