Thursday, August 06, 2009

Valley Takes Trash Seriously

Last night, Scott’s cousin Ambre, her husband and their son were over visiting and I was in the kitchen with them cooking dinner. Through the kitchen window, I see a vehicle I don’t recognize pull into the driveway and a man with a badge on his hip get out and head to the door. I step outside to see what he wants and the following conversation takes place.

Officer: I’m here to see David (Scott’s first name)
Me: (breathing a sigh of relief that he’s not there for me) He’s not home from work yet, can I help you?
Officer: I’m here about his trash bill. What do you know about that?
Me: Well, I don’t know anything about it.
Officer: Are you his wife?
Me: Yes, but very recently. In fact, I just moved in last week.
Officer: Well, his trash bill is VERY overdue.
Me: (sigh and say) How much does he owe?
Officer: $115. I’m actually here to write him a citation and fine from the city.
Me: And how do we go about taking care of that?
Officer: You’ll need to go to City Hall and pay the full amount
Me: Well, I can go do that right now
Officer: Well, if you can do that now, I won’t write this citation and you should be very thankful, the fine is like $500
Me: Well, I appreciate that and I’ll go drop a check in the drop box right now.

Can you believe that? First off, let me explain. About a year ago, I set up all of Scott’s bills online to be automatically drafted out of his account each month. The only bill that I was not able to do that with was, of course, the city trash bill. I told him this, but apparently he forgot. So for nearly a YEAR now, he has assumed that they were drafting it out and so he’s not been paying it. I’m not sure which I’m most shocked about… the fact that he’s gone so long without paying and they’ve still be picking up the trash, that the city fine is $500 or that they send the law out to your house to give you the citation! Either way, we had an eventful evening. And yes, I did go down there and drop off the check so hopefully the man with the badge will not have to return to the house!

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