- Council Committee Passed the Freeze
- Carol Campbell Passes Away
- My first trip to the public library
- Fight digital exclusion
- What if half of Philadelphia didn't have roads?
- You know, let's not even worry about the City Commissioners office messing up voter registration processing
- Bold ideas to fix the budget
- Mayor Nutter's Town Hall Meeting Schedule
- City Releases Library Information to City Council
- Size of Philadelphia government?
When Bureaucracies Attack: Destroying the Environment, One Can at a Time
Submitted by Dan U-A on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 8:33am.
Yesterday, the City’s well regarded recycling coordinator quit in a huff. Seriously, a huff. This is not the farewell of someone who cares whether or not she burns bridges:
After only 18 months on the job, Joan Hicken sent a sarcastic note to associates Friday, saying: "It's been a real . . . pleasure." An autoreply to e-mails sent to her city in-box reads: "I will be out of the office starting 08/31/2007 and will not return until 12/31/2007. Actually, I won't be returning!"
Hicken was apparently a very well regarded person in the profession, who was chewed up and spit out by the that squelches innovation, the Bureaucracy of the Philadelphia city government. I know there are some who would like to spin this as simply a disgruntled employee. But when person after person says basically the same thing, you have to wonder what is going on in City Hall.
Sampson met with her shortly after she started, when "she was going through the kind of shock professionals go through when they come to Philly."
Nine weeks into the job, she still had no city e-mail address.
Or…
"I think one of her bigger frustrations, which I gathered from lots of meetings, is that there is no overriding, well-organized goal for the city. No action plan."
Or…
She said that "almost nothing about the decisions that have been made in the department the last couple years has made sense. . . . There's a lot of stop and go, smoke and mirrors, without a whole lot of accountability."
Recyclying and the environment are really perfect examples of the City not being able to get out of its own way. Philly was the first major city to require everyone to recycle; we could have continued to become a national leader. Instead, we have pitifully low rates of recycling that trash (badda bing) the environment, and cost us money. Then, we have innovative programs in the City, like RecycleBank. But they get very little traction with City Government, so, it doesn’t go anywhere beyond a couple neighborhoods.
We could be a leader, helping the environment, and saving money. Instead…
I am not one to hit at City workers, most of whom work hard in their jobs. But something here- culturally if nothing else- has to change. The bureaucracy is going to have to figure out how to help innovate, or we are all going to be taken down with it. In the meantime, its trash day in Fairmount, and the trash trucks are filling up with glass and cans.
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Recycling here is weird
Recycling here is really weird. When I put my stuff out for recycling, it's always gone, but I suspect sometimes that it actually just goes in the trash.
This week, though, weirdly, I put sort of a lot out (it tends to, umm... pile up a while at my place before I sort it... sometimes its aaaaa whiiiiilllleee)... maybe five bags worth. Anyway, when I came home, they hadn't taken the glass or the plastic. The metal was gone (no surprise; I have metal scavengers on my street) and the paper, but not the glass and plastic.
How do you figure?
I don't figure.
Anyway, it's weird and it sucks that it doesn't work better and it sucks even more that our City isn't more coordinated overall. Hopefully Nutter is not a micro-manager and he can hire some really smart people and give them reign to thrive but also help them know what each other are up to.
---
The Russellian Incorporated Innovations Corporation
Lefty Homilies
No curbside plastic pick up
In my neighborhood we have every-other-week curbside pick up of glass, metal and paper. According to the city's website:
Not sure what a "telephone book" is but conspicuously absent from this list are cardboard and plastics. If you're setting your plastics out on the curb, they're most likely getting tossed in with the regular trash. Unless you live in one of those "Recycle Bank" neighborhoods, in which case, I suspect you can toss just about anything in your recycle bin/bucket. I see a lot of recycling bins every week with plastic bottles in them and I always suspect they're from people who moved to Philly from cities where they actually have an adequate recycling program.
I can't explain why your glass isn't getting picked up. You should be able to put your glass and metal in the same bin anyway, again, according to the city's site:
Here's info for if you want to take care of your plastics and cardboard yourself. Just remember #1 and #2 plastic ONLY! ;)
I recommend the spot at 50th and Baltimore. You can check out the cool coffee shop that's right there after you drop off your old milk jugs and pizza boxes.
good to know
but my bags o' plastic had always been picked up before! well, probably just thrown in the trash.
I want to do good, but I need it to be simple. Even if I were one to read regulations, I wouldn't remember any of them, or I'd get them screwed in my head.
it has to work for simpletons like me, you know? But yeah, I'll make a call.
---
The Russellian Incorporated Innovations Corporation
Lefty Homilies
We Can Do Something
First off, you should call and complain that they didn't take all of your recyclables.
You only need to sort it into 2 kinds: containers (metal, glass) and paper, unless you live in West and Northeast Philly where you can put it all in one container, plus your plastics and glass. My guess is that you live in a non-plastic and cardboard section of the city, the recycling crew saw plastics and glass mixed together, so didn't take any of it, like they're told.
It's insane to have these different regulations for different parts of the city that no one knows about, but it's doubly insane because if you do manage to hide your plastics at the bottom of a bin and get them taken, they'll get recycled. Everything ends up in the same place, Blue Mountain Recycling, in South Philly. The city thinks plastics take up too much space in the recycling trucks, so they'd rather have them take up space in the trash trucks and landfill them...
http://www.recyclenowphila.org/home.asp
How you can help:
1. visit the website and sign the petition
2. check out the GreenFest on South Street this Sunday from 11-6. Talk to reps from RecycleNOW Philadelphia, find out how to join your neighborhood chapter of the group and pick up a free recycling bin while you're at it. I'd love talk about recycling and the bureaucracy http://www.greenfestphilly.org/
3. attend the Philly Blocks Conference and the Clean and Green Neighborhoods group http://www.phillyblocks2007.eventbrite.com/
4. come to the sweet Rock & RecycleNOW show headlined by the Capitol Years http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/fundraiser.html
god i love quoting myself
so first and foremost, i live in west philly and we can recycle everything now. i love it. i am obsessive. joel doesn't even put anything in the bins anymore just to let me do it. i get such a thrill. i particularly like recycling mixed paper (like phone books--Dan P.--are you living in a cave? phone books--you know, the pre-Google way to look up numbers).
anyway, that all being said, of course our city's bureaucracy strangles itself. Dan's points above are well taken. However, I had a really GOOD experience with the bureaucracy a year ago which I wrote up in a blog post here. And I quote...from myself:
My small point here being that sometimes we, the citizens of Philadelphia, are complicit participants in dysfuntional bureaucracy. As Ben says above, call, complain, enagage, and as my story illustrates, maybe something will hapen.
Wha?
Omigod! There was a "pre-Google?" And all along, I thought those things were booster seats so short people could see over the steering wheel. I always wondered why they they were bundled in plastic in groups of 5 on the first floor of my old apartment building.
I have the similar obsessiveness about recycling. It's gotten to the point where my fiancee even asks me (sarcastically, possibly) whether it's a "one or a two" when she catches me looking at the bottom of a plastic container that I just rinsed off. I also find myself getting seriously disappointed when I find out it's a No. 5 or No. 6 and I won't have a chance to drop it off at 50th and Baltimore.
3 & 4s
Wait, are you telling me there are places to drop off my 3 & 4 plastics? The place I go to at Washington & Front on Saturday only allows 1 & 2. Am I going to have to start taking the subway somewhere once a month to drop off other plastics somewhere else?
(am I really this crazy?)
not crazy
Charlie, the closest place to recycle non 1s and 2s is Pottstown, so you can catch the Schuylkill Valley Rail out there in 10 years time.
http://www.recyclingservices.org/accepted.htm
The Talent Problem
I think Dan's right that this problem is bigger than recycling, or the specificities of what does and doesn't get picked up in which neighborhoods on which weeks. The anecdote about nine weeks without an email address suggests that the city's bureaucracy is failing on basic levels. Also, while there may be high-profile hires and press conferences promising big changes, there's no institutional follow-through from either above (the mayor's office) or below (the entrenched career employees). While there are lots of deeper ways that the city is failing its citizens, it's very hard to turn that around when the city can't even serve the needs of its own staff and acquires a reputation for squandering talent.
Nutter (or any mayor) shouldn't micro-manage, but as a mayor who's pledged both an intimate knowledge of city hall and to change the way city government works, he definitely needs to step in and support the people who are trying to make that transformation happen. If Hicken reached up to John Street or his office, it doesn't sound like it had much of an effect.
Ideally, you need to pair talented newcomers who know how government can work with veterans who know how Philadelphia's government works. (Ha ha.) But one thought I had reading Karen's post on Monday ("Michael Nutter wants talented young people involved in city government") is that we can put these two together.
Imagine some kind of "Teach for America"-like program, for young people just out of college or transitioning from different fields who want to serve in government. Give the Joan Hickens of the world, outsiders who know how to make city government work and who have a mandate for change, a small army of these kids, who have no real attachment to the internal politics of the Streets department (or Street administration); they just want to make a difference. I don't think we'd have city-wide single-stream recycling overnight, but I bet Hicken would have her email address, and more personnel weight to put towards solving the problems the city government can't seem to solve.
--Tim
Ideally, you need to pair
My only fear is that instead of infecting the old-timers with the optimism and energy of the newcomers, the opposite would happen and the newcomers would quickly get frustrated and quit or become "assimilated" into the bureaucratic borg... a borg that promises topnotch benefits and pretty good pay.
The point about burnout is
The point about burnout is well-taken (it may be an even bigger problem w/ Teach for America). That's part of the rationale behind plugging in the young idealistic newbies with the new external hires or in new departments, rather than just sticking them into the big bureaucratic pool.
A bigger potential drawback could be that the next new recycling director (for example) would have to train a bunch of kids who don't know anything in addition to wrangling the existing institutions, and even less gets done. But there's a huge upside if it works out -- and anecdotally, training people from scratch (especially young people) is easier than retraining people who are resistant to change.
But even "assimilation" of the young idealists into "the bureaucratic borg" isn't the worst thing that can happen -- it'd be an infusion of smart young people into the government and the creation of a whole new group of career civil servants.
--Tim
looking at the top
speaking as a talented young person, i am all for new blood. however, anyone who has ever worked any job knows that organizational culture comes from the top. the way your boss behaves and the expectations s/he lays out for you as an employee have a lot to do with how you operaqte as a worker.
the question in philadelphia is "who is at the top?"
ostensibly it is the mayor in many cases and the people s/he appoints to cabinet level and other positions. so our likely new mayor, Nutter, should be able to make a lot of changes. however, i don't know this for a fact, but is suspect there are also a lot of people in city government who know a ward leader or other elected who helped get them their job that may be beyond the purview of the mayor. these patronage employees are not nessecarily bad or inept people, but they do likely need to be held to some objective standards for their work performance. can another management structure be inserted to hold these people accountable or do patronage employees need to be rooted out? is it worth it to the new mayor to expend the political capital needed to do this?
one thing to consider in answering this is that firing or laying off older city employees in favor of a "teach for america" like-program that brings in young folks could have a pretty significnat impact on our economy. offering jobs that are in many cases occupied by people without college degrees to young people who have degrees displaces a whole cohort of workers. they will then have to dive into an economy that will offer lower wages than they currently make. meanwhile, younger workers are much more mobile and more likley to leave the city.
what effects does that have on the long-term health of the city's tax base?
Good Managers
I agree with Ray in that I think the entire government structure really is dependent upon how good the Mayor's appointees to senior cabinet/director level positions are. Ed Rendell is a very smart guy, but the success we saw under his administration was the direct result of his having hiring very competent, seasoned managers who were very effective. On the flip-side, John Street prioritized loyalty and preferred to reward allies and supporters.
It really comes down to how committed Michael Nutter is to his message. Sure, he puts on the "reform face" for the cameras, but its very easy to say one thing and then bow to political pressure later on after the election. How many politicians have we seen fly in under the reform banner and leave not having done anything but the status quo? If Nutter is truly committed to hiring good people to reform some of these struggling agencies, he'll have to bust a lot of egos and make a few enemies in the process.
I don't think anyone's
I don't think anyone's talking about "firing or laying off older city employees," at least not to make room. This would be an "in addition to" -- possibly with some kind of Americorps-style federal money or matching funds. TFA doesn't fire teachers. And it would be targeted to specific, high-value departments that you want to expand or transform.
Nutter put a lot of emphasis on recycling in his primary campaign, and Philly just lost the head of that department, whose goals sounded awfully similar to his. That's bad. Ultimately, you want to protect that investment in talent at the managerial level -- and traditional hiring, transfer, and patronage programs may not be the way to do that.
--Tim