Northwest Indiana Discussion

The vote was 5-3 with Salinas being absent at the Council meeting tonight. Emerson, Higgs, and Markovich voted against the ordinance. Mr Emerson tried to get an amendment with reasonable regulations, but failed. Those who voted in favor were Kalwinski, Spitale, Opinker, Hinojosa, and Venezc.
The direct impacts are as follows. For the 36 registered scrappers and their families, 24 of whom are Hammond residents, they have had their jobs legislated away from them by 5 cold, heartless elitists with no common sense, no compassion, and absolutely no conscience. Some of the 5 council members are/have been double dippers, feeding off the government teet by virtue of their government /city jobs, and their council jobs. Most, if not all, have outside full time jobs in addition to their council paychecks. And, they have voted themselves a raise earlier this year. How good for them, as they sit on their butts and collect 2 paychecks, when people who are picking up scrap are just trying to keep a roof over their head, and feed their families.
The taxpayers lose like heck with this ordinance, all the way around. The alleys will be more trash filled, dangerous, and dirty. The taxpayers now have to fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars for extra crews to pick up the extra rubbish. The estimated cost of just 2 extra trucks and 2 new employees, is over $100,000. Two trucks extra is nowhere near enough to fill this need. The taxpayers now have to pay more for tipping fee's to have the stuff hauled to a landfill.
Enviornmentally, this is a disaster, as the items picked up by the scrappers, and recycled, will now be an additional hazard to the enviornment.
Businesses lose. Mr. Beatty, who's family has been in business in Hammond for 95 years, and among his businesses, a scrapping facility, will be hurt by this ordinance. How many jobs will be lost at Mr. Beatty's place of business, because of this ordinance? What about the other scrapping facilities in Hammond? How many other people are going to lose their jobs because of this ordinance?

Guess who wins? PATRONAGE JOBS. That's right, PATRONAGE JOBS. More city employees, more friends and family plan. Shove the residents out who are trying to make a living in these rough economic times, and put in a bigger patronage army.
No wonder this ordinance passed. the mayor pulled the strings on his puppets, and they did his bidding.
Be warned, residents of Hammond, you are now criminals if you pick up a can lying on the street, or snatch a decent 10 speed bike for your kid, that your neighbor threw out in the trash.

Sorry, but the scrappers are lowlife pigs. They trash the alleys looking for the metal they want and dump everything else.

They have gone through my recycling in front of my house. Taken the aluminum cans and just dumped everything else out onto the grass. I have watched them bust up a TV to take out the copper wiring and just leave the broken shell laying in the alley, broken glass and all.

Part of the reason Hammond looks like trash is because of these people. Not to mention the non-registered ones. Their vehicles are menaces on the road as well with metal piled sky high driving on busy streets.

Matt, I thought you were talking about the McDermott clan in that rant.

Think the ordinance is a mistake. In a community where average income is $35,000, with an average family size of 4, people are struggling.

Shame.

For someone that incessantly derides the administration on the state of the cities alleys and streets, your defense of scavengers just goes to show your problem has to do with the McDermott administration and not the "actual" state of the city.

McDermott has been woefully slow in dealing with a problem that has beleaguered the Robertsdale neighborhood for at least the last 5 years. Scavengers come in from Chicago and raid the alleys in a regular basis, leaving a trail of debris and trash. They strip the metal off of anything they can find and leave the carcass where ever they drop it. Middle of the alley ....someone elses garage line .... without a care in the world because they don't have to clean it or look at it.

For the record, I no longer live in Hammond and I say good riddance to that shithole. During my move I put countless items out on the garage line and watched the scrappers literally fight each other for them and trash the rest. They dumped my garbage can upside down on 2 different occasions to see if there was anything to be found in the can.

Hard economic times or not, does not give someone the right to trash the neighborhood in hopes of making a few dimes.

Too hard on the problem? Hardly, it should have been dealt with years ago and am surprised you are not yelling from the treetops about the McDermotts inability to deal with the problem and the police not enforcing the law.

But in bizarro land you are against anything McDermott does, no matter the fact that he finally came around to fixing a problem after many years.

So you left town, EH? Interesting. I hope the door didn't hit you on your dupa on the way out. The scavengers, for the most part, were neat and clean. There are always a few bad apples in every bunch. Genuine scrappers are NOT theives. I believe they provided a needed service to the community, and paid for that privilege with their $100 a year permit. When we have put metal out, it was gone in 10 minutes to 1 hour. Now THAT is service. FYI, when we have had large metal items to be put out in the alley, we just stopped the next scrapper to help us out. They hauled it for free out of the house, didn't matter if it was a stove, frig, etc. These hard working people really helped out a lot of seniors and disabled who could not physically remove large items from their homes or garages.

McDermott has ignored the city's gang problem, allowed squatters to come in, not register their cars. If he enforced the 60 day must get plates law, he would be registering voters and would be sitting on the curb looking for a job.

But then again, the city's gang problem is really not Tom's job.

Ahhh once again you miss the problem in an attempt to just cast blame at McDermott. The question should be why does Hammond only have a median income of only $35,000 and a per capita income of roughly $18,000?

What factors caused that? Why can't it be raised? Why are Hammond residents so untrained and uneducated that they would have to supplement their income scrapping?

Sure McDermott can be blamed for some of those factors, but so can Dedelow, McDermott Sr, Raskosky and Klen. Hammond's problems started the better part of 2 generations ago and nobody has taken the steps to move the Calumet Region into the future. It's a pretty common problem in NW Indiana.