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About the City By Councilman Kingery I will start this article by talking about the recycling that the city does. I suspect most of you have heard that it costs more to do the recycling than we get back when we sell the saved items. Hopefully as time goes on we can make it pay better, however we are setting a good example and it does help save natural resources in the process. You have probably noticed there are bins with labels indicating what to put in each one as a way of sorting items into separate categories. One of the problems reported by the Public Works Director concerning the recycling is the failure to place items in the correct container or in placing garbage items in with recycled items. Since we lose some moneyin the process it is very important to be careful as you drop off your items. If there is garbage placed in with items, or incorrect items placed in the bins it often results in the entire bin being sent to the landfill. It is too time consuming to re-sort the bin of items and costs too much to justify city employees taking time to do this. You can be helpful in two ways, first be careful as you sort items so that errors do not occur. Second if you notice a mistake by someone else, and you have the time, help out by re-sorting the items, or remove theincorrect items and dispose of them in the bin for garbage. This way we do not end up with the complete bin being disposed of at the landfill. The recycling area on Clay Street is at times being used by residents from outside the city to dispose of their trash. Weekends are especially bad and on Monday’s the Public Works staff are spending considerable time week after week cleaning up after the violators. We are asking residents from outside the city to please take your trash directly to the landfill and help pay your fair share of this expense. Not only are you putting the expense of your trash onto the city residents by dumping at the recycling area, you are also adding to the expense of cleaning up after you and transporting your trash to the landfill, plus it is illegal for you to do this. City residents have been reporting this to the city office and our patrol officers have also witnessed “out of city residents” unloading garbage at the recycle area. If you witness this occurring it will help if you can report the license plate number and the time of the occurrence to the city office. A picture would be helpful too. The license plate will help make sure we are properly identifying the violator and help protect any city residents that have already paid for the service. It will soon be election time again and Marilyn Werner and Tony Reynolds are coming to the end of their terms on the City Council. I am fairly sure Marilyn is not going to run again and I have been told Tony is considering not running. At any rate, competition is good for all of us. We need citizens to run for the City Council positions. If you have high ethics and believe in doing what is best for the citizens of Douglas we need you to step forward and file for the positions. Both positions are four year terms. This is an opportunity for you to speak up and have an influence on the future of Douglas. This is not an opportunity to do what is best for you and your friends, but to do what is best for your community! We need strong, open minded people that will listen to all sides of an issue and vote for what they believe is ---PAGE BREAK--- best for the future of the City of Douglas. Douglas has some tough decisions coming up and you should be involved in helping make them! Go to the City Hall, get an application, fill it out and turn it in! Time is running short. Encourage anyone you think would be a good council member to run for City Council too!Having a choice will be good when it comes time to vote.