Illegal Dumping In The ATL: A Solicitor's Office Investigator Tells The Painful Truth About The Employees Who Are Asleep In The Guard Tower

This guy had better watch himself.

He doesn't realize that in Atlanta there is far more defensiveness about being called out on the news than there is a will to get this type of problem fixed. He just violated the rules of "playa hating". (I say this as a 5 year employee with the city back in the day)

The man said that many of the people in Sanitation are ILLITERATE!! Boy did he step in it with that one.

The city of Atlanta is a political organization and works like a pendulum. Once a political scandal breaks out that once open, free-wheeling environment slams shut. Where as once your manager could sign off on purchase orders up to $300 per his authority - after some scandal - only the departmental commissioner could sign off on every P.O. . Once this 6 figure salary person sees that they have other, more important things to be worried about than a $60 order for toner cartridges - slowly but surely the pendulum swings back the other way.

In truth the defacto state of the City of Atlanta government is "a wide open playground". There is too much work invovled in the aggressive hands on management described above.

If you think that adding an automated system would fix the problem. Think again. A system is only as good as the data that is input into it. Once the employees figure out how to skirt the system - the defacto state is returned to.

At least with the quesitonal financial transations there is a paper trail of checks that someone can look at. Even though you might have successfully cashed the check, thinking that you are home free - the audit trail remains in the city's possession for a future investigation.

The only way that the situation at hand with the trash dump enforcement is going to be addressed is with:

• GPS Units put into all of the vehicles owned by the city
• A centralized tracking system to passively record the movements of all of these vehicles
• A Route that each of these Sanitation Supervisors are required to drive
  
• A notation of the Dumping Hot Spots that need to be frequently
  
• The use of some battery powered/solar powered surveillance camera posted on poles that monitor these frequent dumping areas - Catch the Illegal Dumpers on Film just as "Street Pirates" are getting caught. This irrefutable evidence will bring the problem in check

With all of these systems in place both the employees and the Illegal dumpers will be brought in line