The New Orleans budget fiasco will soon hit residents on their curbs or in their pocketbooks, as city officials wrestle with whether to raise the fee for weekly trash pickups or cut recycling and other sanitation-related services.
Without a fee increase, the city’s sanitation department will operate on a barebones budget that barely covers the cost of curbside garbage hauling, according to Sanitation Director Matt Torri, who addressed the City Council on Thursday at a hearing on the department’s proposed budget for next year.
In addition to cutting curbside and drop-off recycling, Torri said the department’s budget, which as proposed would drop from $71 million to $52 million, would require ending other quality-of-life sanitation services…