All's fair but that doesn't make it right

Once we knew we'd be moving to St. Petersburg, we started thinking about where we would live when we got there.
I found a readers' forum on a real estate site from the area and posted a question asking about the best places to live.
I got several replies, including one from a real estate agent named Mike.
We wrote back and forth and pretty soon, he was Our Realtor.
We'd give him a list of houses we found online and he would line up visits for us.
He might have seen us as business clients but we saw him as a friend -- our first friend in Florida.
He took us through dozens of houses.
A lot of them were nice; they were OK. But they just weren't THE house.
Then one day, the day after a marathon house-shopping spree with Mike, I drove around all day long all by myself. I drove street after street, neighborhood after neighborhood, trying to find a house.
Six hours later, I went back to the apartment my husband is temporarily staying in and called up the Tampa Bay Craig's List.
(Craig's List is a free online classified service, available for most parts of the country -- including the Cleveland area.)
I found a house there that seemed perfect. A street was listed but no house number. I sent the home owner, who was selling it without a real estate agent, an e-mail.
She wrote back with the house number and we drove past it.
It WAS perfect. It was in a great location. It was the right price. And, most importantly, it was exactly the kind of house we were looking for.
We went and looked at it, one thing led to another and pretty soon we were making plans to buy the house.
And then we got an e-mail from Mike.
"Where are you guys?"
Mike. Our Realtor. Our friend.
How does Mike fit into this?
We didn't know so we didn't answer him. We haven't answered him.
I asked some friends. They said, "Oh, well. Too bad."
I asked a real estate agent. He said, "It depends on what you signed."
We didn't sign anything. Besides, I wasn't asking about the legality of what had happened, I was asking about the morality of it.
I want to tell Mike we never set out to betray him.
We had every intention of buying a house from him.
It just happened.
I just wish I felt better about it.

Those winds blew some sense in me

"If a hurricane's coming," I said to my husband the other day, "I'm not leaving."
He turned toward me, laughed and said, "Oh, yes, you are."
"The house isn't that close to the water," I said, waiting for him to keep arguing.
But he was done talking. He wasn't angry but it was clear he thought the subject was too ridiculous to waste any more energy discussing.
I was talking about weathering a typhoon in the house we are buying in St. Petersburg.
If you've ever flown into the Tampa airport, you've seen St. Petersburg. From the sky, it looks like a teardrop -- made up of almost as much water as land -- hanging into the Gulf of Mexico.
In other words, almost all of it is close to water.
The city is mapped into evacuation areas. The areas that get evacuated first are given the letter A. That includes waterfront property and all mobile home parks.
Our new house is in Evacuation Area B -- second highest priority.
But I still thought it was OK to wait out a hurricane there. How bad can it be, I thought.
And then I met Ike.
The winds were just starting to pick up when I dropped my weekend-marriage husband off at the airport Sunday afternoon.
By the time I got home, the sky had a yellow cast and the wind was blowing down leaves and limbs.
My backyard looked like a war zone. Most of the potted plants were tipped over and ...
THE GAZEBO WAS FLOATING UPSIDE DOWN IN THE POOL.
It's one of those canvas shelters that have screen sides that can be pulled shut but most of the time are tied in the corners.
It had been BOLTED onto the wooden deck but now it was in the pool -- like a dead dog in a cartoon with its four PVC-pipe legs sticking straight up into the air.
I've got to get it out, I thought as my head quickly filled with visions of those four pipe legs ripping holes in the pool liner.
I reached in the pool, grabbed one of the legs and pulled.
But the howling wind was pulling back and the water in the pool was lapping over the side of the canvas, filling it like it was a gigantic upside-down umbrella.
I yanked and pulled and rocked and tugged and eventually pulled it out.
Now what?
I now had an upside-down umbrella on land. It was no longer in danger of sinking but now it was in danger of blowing away.
I stood on the canvas to keep it from blowing away and I looked around for salvation that wouldn't come.
I pulled the legs off and dragged it next to the utility shed to shield it from the wind.
The wind was still gusting as I walked back to the house, satisfied I had secured the gazebo as best I could.
I stowed some lawn furniture and righted the plants that had tipped over.
And then I went in the house -- and finally had the chance to say, "Yikes!"
The wind was THIS strong 1,000 miles from where the hurricane made landfall.
How strong must that wind be in Evacuation Area B?
Don't ask me. I'm pretty sure I'll be long gone before I ever get a chance to find out.

The last Chronicle column

What makes a woman -- who is not going into witness protection -- up and leave family and friends, a comfortable home and a newspaper career to move 1,200 miles away?
A husband whose lifelong dream has been to live among palm trees and palmetto bugs, that’s what.
You see, a few months ago, I dragged home from yet another day leading the charge to put out this newspaper to find my teacher-husband hunched over the computer, feverishly tapping on the keyboard with his two pointer fingers.
There were manila folders and stacks of paper everywhere. His reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose and I’m pretty sure he was sweating.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Sending out resumes to Florida,” he answered.
“We’re moving to Florida?”
“We can if I find a job down there. What do you think?”
What I thought was that our lifelong dream of moving to a tropical climate could actually turn out to be more than a dream.
And I also thought that it would give me an excuse to get out of the newspaper.
Putting out a 25,000-circulation daily newspaper is like riding a never-ending roller coaster. I would never voluntarily get off that roller coaster. It’s too much fun. But, at the same time, I always wished the thing would stop for just a minute so I could catch my breath.
And now, with the words, “moving to Florida,” I thought for the first time in my life, I could actually hear the sound of that roller coaster pulling into the station.
In recent years, there have been some things going on at the paper that told me it’s time to move on. Now I had the chance.
And, so, we were moving – or at least we were willing to move.
My husband sent out close to 100 resumes to Florida school districts that had teacher openings.
He never heard back from any of them … not even a “thanks but no thanks.” It’s as if he was filing those applications into a black hole.
And then he heard from St. Petersburg. He was one of a dozen prospects for one job. He went down for an interview. They hired him that very day.
And so, we really were moving.
Fast forward two months and here we are today. He has a job. I don’t. For the first time in 30 years, I not only don’t work at a newspaper, I don’t work anywhere.
Talk about a woman without a country.
I hope to get some writing work, hopefully on a magazine, and I plan to shop my column around down there.
But I just wanted to say how much fun it has been telling you stories every week in this column.
And I want to thank you for all the kind comments you have sent back to me about it and the stories of your own lives that you have shared with me.
I always thought that deep down we really are all a lot alike. Your reactions to this column proved that to be true.
I’ll keep writing online at pattiewald.blogspot.com.
I’m sure the skunks and other critters that have been terrorizing me in Ohio will get word to the wildlife in Florida that I’m on my way down.
Do you think beating with a broken broom handle on the top of the metal lid of a fire pit will scare away alligators in Florida the way it scared away birds of prey in Ohio?
Stay tuned.

Patti Ewald’s last day as managing editor of The Chronicle was Friday. You can always reach her at pagewald@hotmail.com. Please stay in touch.

Patti and the bachelor

Well, things have finally calmed down with our local-boy-makes-good story about Jesse Csincsak and The Bachelorette.
I got involved writing the story when Steve Fogarty, our entertainment go-to guy, couldn't watch it one night.
Then, a couple weeks later, he couldn't watch it again.
After seeing it twice, I was, gulp, hooked.
It's a dumb show and I yelled at the TV as much as the sports guys in the newsroom do when they are watching the Cavaliers but I watched anyway.
I'm pretty sure it's just because Jesse was involved. Although I never knew him, he was a year behind -- and a friend of -- my older son in high school.
He also happens to be my cousins' cousin.
So I had more than a casual interest.
I never thought he had a shot ... even when he was one of only two remaining.
But I did think he was the only one of all of them who wasn't the kind of gushy guy I would never want to go out with.
I got the interview with him that ran on Wednesday by calling his publicist -- "Everything has to go through my publicist," he told us -- as soon as DeAnna Pappas picked him.
I asked if I could talk to Jesse the next day and she hooked me up.
I didn't know until I got him on the phone that I had 10 minutes with him. Now, I don't know if you've ever interviewed anyone but 10 minutes isn't a lot of time.
Sure, it was time to ask all the questions I had prepared but it didn't leave a whole lot of time to write down his responses.
If I would have been smart, I would have recorded the conversation.
He's a nice guy. He really is. And as was his style on the show, he seemed to be really honest and forthright with his answers.
I'll be curious to see how the story ends.
Until then, I'm trying to get an invitation to a party he (his publicist) is having when he comes to Ohio later this summer.
If the "press" isn't invited, I told her I would just come as a regular person.
Wonder if she believes me when I say I can separate the two.

The building has no power and neither do we

We were without electricity for a few hours Monday night after the storm knocked out power downtown and the newspaper's generator failed to kick on.
When we finally were able to get back on our computers, we hustled to get the paper out.
Sometime after midnight we got a tip that Middle Avenue near Value City and a portion of Russia Road had been barricaded and there were many police cars in the area.
We called the Elyria Police and were told that the sheriff's department was handling it.
The only question was: Handling what?
There were no reporters left in the newsroom at that hour to dispatch so I asked one of our copy editors -- Michael Baker -- to call the sheriff's department to find out what was going on.
Well, seems the dispatcher would give him absolutely no information. Nothing.
He came into my office.
"What am I supposed to do in a situation like this?" he asked.
"She wouldn't tell me anything."
I couldn't imagine that a dispatcher would not give us a general idea of what was going on.
So, I said, "Give me that number."
I called her.
"I don't have any information," she said.
"You don't know what the call was they went out on?" I asked.
"I don't have a press release," she said.
She doesn't have a press release.
Now, come on.
"All I want to know is what was the call they went out on," I repeated.
She repeated similar stonewalling sentiments.
She would not tell me anything.
So, I pulled Michael away from his copy-editing job and sent him to the scene to check things out.
Then I left a message on Sheriff Stammitti's voicemail pleading for just a little cooperation.
When Michael got to the barricades, he was told by a law enforcement officer to wait in the Value City parking lot.
Michael asked him what was going on and he said he didn't know.
He said he didn't know.
I was beginning to wonder if anybody did know.
Michael told me that Terry Costigan of TMC News was already there.
I told him to ask Terry what was going on.
And finally, we got our information: There's a hostage situation in a house.
Thanks, Terry.
You know, that's all we wanted to know.
Is that really too much to ask?

Pomp not too circumspect

It has to be tough to be the superintendent of a school district and have to speak at commencement. And, if there are two high schools in your district, it would be doubly tough.
So, what do you do?
Well, if you are Cheryl Atkinson, winding up her first year as superintendent of Lorain Schools, you just give the same speech twice. Well, almost the same speech.
When I was reading over the story Jason Hawk wrote for Wednesday's paper about Admiral King's graduation, her words sounded vaguely familiar.
So I looked back to see what she had said to Southview graduates the night before.
Monday night, she asked Southview graduates, "Who are you? Are you the next business owner? Scientist? Teacher? President? Will you hold the cure for cancer? Who are you, really?"
Tuesday night, she asked Admiral King graduates, "Who are you? You are the ones who have achieved in spite of obstacles … you are our window of opportunity, cure for cancer, hope for the future of our city, state and nation."
Well, at least by the second reincarnation of the speech, she was answering the question, "Who are you?" instead of following it up with more questions.
Maybe she'll luck out next year and one of these graduating seniors will answer her question with the words: "A speechwriter!"

Of missing bodies and handsome bachelors

Some nights here in the newsroom, we dig and dig and finally find gold.
But some nights, we dig and dig and all we end up with is a great big hole.
Tonight was a whole lot more the latter.
Court reporter Brad Dicken picked up a lawsuit during late afternoon court checks that had him breathless.
The suit seemed to say that three brothers were suing the City of Amherst for digging up their deceased mother's body from a cemetery and selling it to a man for $70.
Well, after Brad went to Amherst and talked to a few people, the story became: Amherst dug up a woman's ashes from a potter's field in Crownhill Cemetery because a man -- presumably the woman's boyfriend -- wanted to move the ashes closer to family.
It's still an interesting story you can read about in tomorrow's Chronicle ... it just wasn't quite what we thought it was going to be.
But then, neither was the story of our bachelor, Jesse Csincsak, vying for the affections of "The Bachelorette."
Jesse, an Amherst grad, is a professional snowboarder -- and he dresses like one (think skater). He had on a multi-colored jacket and neon sneakers and his hair hung in his eyes.
But, no matter, The Bachelorette not only kept him in the running, she gave him one of the first three roses (which means he's safe from elimination). Steve Fogarty watched the show at home and e-mailed in a story when it was over.
Well, those were the two most interesting stories we were working on tonight.
And the good news is, they're not over yet.
Stay tuned.

Slow night except for the Cavs

The most exciting thing that happened in the newsroom tonight -- besides the Cavs tying up the series, of course -- was a phone call I got from an extremely angry woman.
"I want to talk to the person who puts the ads in the paper," she said to me through what sounded like clenched teeth.
"Ads or stories?" I asked as calm as she was uncalm.
"Whatever. Did you see today's paper? Despite imposters, wild child, Cavs beat all (that was the headline that ran on the Cavs story on Monday's front page)," she asked, her words dripping with disgust.
"Does that belong on the front page?"
"What offends you about it?" I asked her.
"It's sports!"
Hmmm. I tried to explain to her that every day every story is relative. That's the way the news goes. Sometimes a really great story will end up inside the paper because there just happens to be -- on that particular day -- half a dozen even greater stories.
Other days, a cute squirrel or a Cavaliers preview story winds up on Page 1 because there just isn't anything better to knock it out of its lofty front page spot.
I think I settled her down a little but all that means is she wasn't quite as angry. She didn't stop her sports-on-the-front-page complaint.
I don't know. I think the Cavs are pretty big news right now.
Aren't they?

Workin' on the night shift

I have new hours custom-made for those upcoming sunny summer days but not so much for an old girl like me.
In a recent downsizing, the paper eliminated the assistant managing editor position and the top three newsroom managers all got jockeyed around.
I kept my title and as many of the management duties as I can perform on the late shift while the assistant managing editor was bumped to metro editor and the metro editor was bumped to a reporting position.
But, seriously, it's kind of nice to be with the night people. The pace is much slower and the aggravations a lot fewer.
Gee, I might even have time to blog ...
Here's what was going on tonight in The Newsroom: My favorite story we were working was the one about the 23-cent pizza sale going on at 86 Papa John outlets dotted around the Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo and Youngstown areas.
Bruce Bishop, our always photographer and sometimes reporter, wrote a short story based on what he saw when he went to one of the two Papa John's closest to us on Detroit Road in Westlake to take photos about 3 this afternoon.
When Jason Hawk, our night police reporter, got in, he updated the story and filed it around 6. At that time, the manager of nine Cleveland-area P.J.s said they had enough pizza makings to go the duration -- which was supposed to be 12:30 Friday morning.
Well, guess what? They didn't. Both the Westlake and North Olmsted P.J.s stopped answering their phones before 9 p.m. and reporter Cindy Leise, who stopped in for a late night pizza snack after shopping in North Olmsted, called us with an update just before 10 p.m.
"The cops just came by and told us all to go home," she said. "And, we heard the Westlake one is closed, too."
So I pulled the story off the page and gave it back to Jason for an update. It changed considerably with the thrust now being that they ran out of pizzas before hungry LeBron fans ran out of the desire for them.
We also were finally able to report that it looks as if the victim of Tuesday's heinous abduction and shooting at the Carlisle Reservation will probably be paralyzed from the wound to her back.
We had known and reported that the bullet hit close to her spine but we were not able to get the family to tell us any more. But they told the sheriff's department and that's who we are attributing it to in tomorrow's story.
The Cavs game was on the TV out in the newsroom and although I can't see it and can hardly hear it from my office, I can usually hear hoopin' and hollerin' coming from the sports desk.
But not tonight.
"The Cavs lost?" I asked Assistant Sports Editor Scott Petrak.
"They got killed," he said.
And other than that, it was a pretty quiet night.
Unless, of course, you count the unannounced visit from our former co-worker Matt Westerhold, who is now the managing editor of The Sandusky Register.
And, if you think there are sordid tales here in Lorain County, you should hear what goes on in Sandusky.

The calm before the storm

Well, it's election day in the newsroom -- and it's the deadest place you have ever seen.
And there's nothing comforting about a quiet newsroom. It's unnatural.
It's supposed to be filled with chaos and chatter and people running around and squabbling, er, discussing.
The few people who are actually working the day shift -- we need all the troops we can muster tonight when the results start pouring in -- are out and about, checking out polling places and police stations.
So far, so good.
Meanwhile, I'm just here waiting for all hell to break loose.
Editors will start coming in about dinner time, reporters an hour or so later. They'll try to get as much of their assigned stories written as they can (the background on candidates or issues) and then "top" them with the results when they come in.
While the Internet and its continuous stream of information has taken some of the fun out of elections for us, I think tonight will have its own magic.
For we, like the rest of you, will be on the edge of our seats waiting to see who won the Democratic presidential race.
Want to share how you voted? I'd love to hear.
It'll give me something to do until the floodgates open.

Earth to Earthlink customers

Just a note to any of you who send e-mail through Earthlink.
You can talk to us, but we can't talk to you.
Yes, it's true. We -- The Chronicle -- have been blocked by the Earthlink blocker.
Our IT department has tried repeatedly to get us off the Earthlink spam list.
I even tried again this morning with a live-chat person.

Anyway, if you are an Earthlink customer and haven't gotten a reply from us, it's not because we don't want to answer you.
It's because your e-mail agent won't let us get to you.

School is closed, no, open, no, closed ...

School closings.
Seems easy enough information to obtain, doesn't it?
It's NOT!
Finding out if your school is open seems like something you should be able to get from the local paper, right?
Well, we think so, too.
We usually have to call every district and ask "Have you closed school for tomorrow?"
Seems inefficient. We are trying to set up some sort of system so the schools will automatically inform us.
This is what happened early this morning: Bruce Bishop, our chief photographer and Web site guru, wanted to post school closings online. It was 2:50 a.m.
He looked first to WEOL, the AM radio station owned by the same company that owns The Chronicle. The radio's Web site had nothing. We found out later that the radio posts its school closings around 6 a.m. (That's what I get for having a night-owl instead of early-bird Web guy, I guess.)
When we had spoken to Lorain County Community College at about 11 p.m. Sunday night, the campus was going to remain open. But that decision changed in the morning.
Long story longer, we are doing our best to try to get you the most accurate information on school closings first. I wanted you to know that.
And if anybody has a suggestion on how we might do that more efficiently, I'd love to hear it.

Hurka recipe

If you have come here looking for the hurka recipe I wrote about in my Feb. 4 Chronicle column, you can get it here.

Good luck, all you little hurka makers.

Hey, it's Lorain, not Low-rain

I live in Lorain.
And I work in Elyria.
That means that every day when I come to work, I cross over the Great Divide -- Route 254.
And I've heard from both sides of that Great Divide.
Elyria people call Lorain "Thugville."
And Lorain people call Elyria "Cowtown."
My Elyria co-workers are always saying things such as: "Aren't you afraid to go home?"
No.
Or "Is that city completely out of control?"
No.
Or "How can you live there?"
I like living there.
Even though there have been a dozen unsolved armed robberies in Lorain since the first of the year.
I want to know what gives?
Who are these gun-totin' robbers?
Are they kids? Where do kids get guns?
Why are they doing this?
Is it because they see others getting away with it?
Is it because they need drug money?
Or do they need money to pay their mortgage or buy their kids medicine?
At least one of these robberies was solved. The one that involved the killing of a man, who by all reports, was one of the gentlest, kindest people in Lorain.
Jose Gonzalez Sr., the grocer who managed to keep his little corner store operating in these tough times. The man who forgave money owed. The man always willing to help someone out.
To that arrest, we should tip our hats to the Lorain police officers who hunted him down.
But what about all the other robbers? How can they be caught?
Help me have something to say when someone says something bad about Lorain.

A blizzard of replies

We've been asking readers to give us their storm stories from the Blizzard of '78 -- and here we are digging out from under a pile of responses.
It is great to have readers interact with us. I think you'll enjoy reading about babies being born, weddings being performed and lots of digging out in our packages of blizzard stories on Sunday.
If you haven't sent us your story, we're still prepared for a late flurry. But send them by Thursday noon.

If only civilized society was a little more civil

Being in the news business means having to deal with the underbelly of the human race.
And I'm not talking about murderers and rapists.
I'm talking about people who weren't paying attention when their parents were teaching them manners.
I'm talking about people who call the newsroom to scream (and that is no exaggeration) profanities about something we did or didn't write.
Here's what happened today:
We had a story in the paper about an Elyria truck driver who was killed in an accident.
It's tough getting details about a fatal car accident.
It's even tougher getting details about the person who was killed.
On deadline. When no or few family phone numbers are listed.
Well, our reporter, Steve Szucs, got the details of the crash.
But he was determined to get more, to tell the whole story -- of not just the accident itself but of the man who lost his life in it.
Steve got lucky. He went through the phone book, dialing numbers until he found the victim's aunt.
She seemed close to the victim. She was broken up about his death. She had a photograph of him that she gave us to put in the paper.
And she told us he didn't have any kids.
Well, guess what? It turns out the victim had a son, a 10-year-old son.
How did we find that out?
By someone who called this morning after reading the story to tell us how incompetent we were.
By someone else who called to tell us to get out stories straight.
And by a dozen other people with similar sentiments -- none of them, to my knowledge, family of the victim.
And finally, in the capper this evening, by a woman who called us every name in the book with f'ing as an adjective for each of those names.
Who ARE these people?
They walk among us.
Let's just hope they aren't walking behind us down a dark alley.

By the way, we made plans to recify our error after the very first phone call.
While we feel bad about the error, frankly, I don't know how we could have done anything differently. Or if we will do anything differently next time.

Soon you'll call -- and someone will answer

Guess where I'm going tomorrow?
To training for our new phone system.
Yes, soon, very soon, you will be able to reach us on our phones again.
Or at least leave us voicemail.
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, we have had only a very limited number of phones since the roof leaked over our phone-room months ago.
Worse, we have had no voicemail.
If you've tried unsuccessfully to reach any of us recently, you know how frustrating it can be.
Imagine how things have been on our end. I have a cell phone and that is the number I list in the paper. That one I pick up. That one takes voicemail.
But sometimes people call my old number, the land line.
Which rings on a phone across the room, a phone that also rings a couple other numbers. Sometimes I get up to answer it and sometimes I don't (sorry).
But soon (I've been assured), there will be a phone on every desk.
A phone that works.

Gay guy furious we reported he was HIV-positive

I got an e-mail today from a very angry man who is HIV-positive.
He was mad because we put his name in a story.
"He had no right to disclose legally protected information," he wrote about our reporter.
Then the HIV-positive man demanded I fire the reporter and advised me to contact our lawyer.
Well, here's the problem. I don't think we did anything wrong.
You see, we included his name in the story because his mother was talking about him during an event to mark World AIDS Day. We covered the event.
What his mother said was compelling: She said she had trouble dealing with it when her son told her 15 years ago that he and his partner were HIV positive. She also said she was shunned by some of her friends.
"I couldn't believe it. I walked out of the room. I couldn't talk to him that day," she said. "I had to learn to love him, accept him and not point any fingers."
We named her and her son in the story because she named her and her son at the event.
I e-mailed the son a response to his note.
"At the event, several people spoke about their loved ones," I wrote. "Our reporter wrote down what was said at the public gathering and then wrote a story about it.
"If I was at a public event such as that – and I am a longtime journalist – I would assume that anybody whose name is mentioned has given the person mentioning it permission to do so. Why would a reporter think otherwise?"
The son phoned me before he got the e-mail.
The only non-hostile word he spoke was "Hello, my name is ..."
And then he started yelling. Not a good approach when you are trying to get a point across.
And then he called me "sweetie." Not a good thing to call a stranger you are trying to convince of anything.
Then he called the reporter the OTHER f-word, the racial slur for homosexuals.
I threatened to hang up on him and he settled down.
He asked to have his name pulled from the story that was online.
I agreed to do it -- without reservation. I understand the situation it put him in.
I also understand that when we cover an event or a meeting, it is our job simply to report what we saw and heard there.
And the more specific we can get, the better.

Even more trash talk in Lorain

The phone rang today.
It was Helen Goldberg, a 90-year-old resident of Lorain's 1st Ward who calls me occasionally.
"I have a good idea for a story," she said.
"Write about what's going on with the trash pickup in Lorain."
Yee-ouch.
We have been writing that story for a long time now and yet sharp-as-a-tack loyal reader Helen has looked right over it -- or has not understood a word we have written.
Chuck Camera, street supervisor, told me after I talked to Helen yesterday that it isn't a fair program for Lorain, the city with a lot of renters (landlords evict them and pile all their belongings in the street) and streets lined with parked cars (so the automated arms on the garbage cans can't get at the bins).
He estimated that of the 22,000 households in Lorain, only 13,000 to 16,000 pay to have their trash picked up.
What about the other 6,000 to 9,000 people?
They either live in apartments and use the apartment Dumpsters or they throw it anywhere they can find -- including the middle of the street, Chuck said.
After I taked to Chuck, I asked our courts and county reporter, Brad Dicken, to write a trash story explaining what's going on but with a bit more of a human angle.
"Talk to the people," I said, "not just the bureaucrats."
Brad told me that the pilot program Lorain is being asked to join is for only two years and 900 households.
After those two years, Lorain can keep doing what it's doing, convert the whole city to the new program or dump the program all together.
If it dumps the program all together, its grant money from the Lorain County Solid Waste Commission would drop minimally (from $250,000 to $225,000), Brad told me.
So, I think that's a small price to pay for a greener planet.
Well, at least a greener county.

(By the way, if you don't understand what's going on either, you're in good company. Lorain Mayor-elect Tony Krasienko was quoted in our story today as saying, "We still never got a complete answer on everything. It's still a little fuzzy.")

Sorting through the trash (collecting)

As a person who faithfully recycles, I was a little dismayed to find out the only thing that stood between me and a healthier planet were six city councilmen in Lorain who last night voted no on "pay as you throw."
For those of you who have been living in a Dumpster for the past few months, "pay as you throw" is a program (being pushed by the Lorain County Solid Waste Policy Committee) in which households are limited to the amount of trash they can put on the curb.
The common way to do this is to give every household two containers. One for trash and one for recylables. The theory behind this is that people trying to save space in their limited trash bin will throw recyclables in the other one, where they belong -- instead of between the coffee grounds and banana peels in the garbage.
Sounds like an idea that should have no opposition, right?
Well, it did. In Lorain. Where I live. The city council vote was 3-6 against the program.
Lorain has to approve it by Wednesday in order for the county to get $1.5 million in recycling incentives.
How could they do this, I thought ... when every other city in Lorain County has approved it?
And then I got this interesting e-mail from Rocky in LaGrange where "pay as you throw" has already been implemented:

"i am a resident of lagrange and have been on the "pay as you throw" program for a few months now. i have received zero cost reduction, actually my last bill went up and i am giving less trash. not to mention i no longer have the ability to throw away large objects or construction material, unless i rent or borrow a truck to load up and take into town to designated area which allows you to throw away such items. i live outside the city and i am truly considering dropping my trash pick-up completely and just burning everything i can and dropping what i can't off at the designated area when needed. to me lorain did the right thing. the program needs to revised to accommodate their issues, but also issues they have not brought up. the designated dumping area needs to be dropped. a monthly or bimonthly or quarterly pick-up for large items and construction material at our residence would be a better solution. also the price needs to go down for people to accept this. throwing away less trash and recycling more should mean we pay less. i am 100% behind the decision that was made in lorain, things need to be improved drastically in my opinion.
also i wish the other city councils would have been as smart as the lorain council in trying to get this program improved before implementing it!
kudos to lorain!"

And now I'm all confused. You mean the trash collectors will never take that old couch or that broken lawn chair if you put them out on the treelawn?
Well, shoot, sometimes you have stuff that won't fit in a garbage can but I don't want to have to haul it to a dump. It's tough enough to do that with tree branches.
And for all this inconvenience -- and the number of trash collectors it should eliminate -- I should see cheaper bills.
We have to do some more reporting on this story, I think.
The only problem is I won't know before I go to the polls today whether to reward or punish those Lorain politicians who voted down the program.