The measure comes with a fine that has not been enforced by city officials.
When Athens City Council members set up a new trash law last fall, we figured they meant business.
All signs pointed in that direction. In January we reported that city code enforcers wrote almost 1,400 trash tickets in 2014. Averaging almost four tickets per day, that total brought the city roughly $50,000 in revenue.
So when city officials decided to crack down even further, we braced ourselves for the worst.
Then, nothing.
Since the new ordinance went into effect this July, code enforcers haven’t slapped anyone with the new $50 fine.
The city is committing to what Mayor Paul Wiehl describes as an “education phase,” where code enforcers have warned violating residents on more than 30 streets.
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There still is no set timeline for the city to enforce this law, one that’s been on the books for a few months now.
We question the worth of any law the city hesitates to enforce nearly a year after getting council’s approval.
It’s not fair to assign a seemingly arbitrary date to start punishing residents — including many students — under a law we already to be consider to be over-reaching and unjust.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post's executive editors: Editor-in-Chief Emma Ockerman, Managing Editor Rebekah Barnes, Opinion Editor Will Gibbs and Digital Managing Editor Samuel Howard. Post editorials are independent of the publication's news coverage.
