Despite all the tension at the county Board of Supervisors’ meeting Tuesday about placing limits on plastic bags, there were funny moments.
When Jennifer Forkish, representing the California Grocers Association, challenged that the county’s proposal to cut bag use by 35 percent by 2010 and 70 percent by 2013 relied on unattainable figures, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky turned to Public Works Director Donald Wolfe.
This wasn’t a number that was pulled out of your, ahhh, rear pocket, was it? Yaroslavsky said, drawing guffaws from the tense environmentalists and industry representatives filling the board chambers.
Wolfe went along with the joke.
It could be so described, he said, before getting serious. But it is a compromise figure.
When the discussion later turned to when an ordinance should be written, it was Supervisor Gloria Molina’s turn to crack a joke. The supervisors want to write an ordinance to create an all-out plastic-bag ban, but it would only go into place if retailers failed to meet the bag reduction targets.
Forkish, still representing the California Grocers Association, criticized the county’s original plan to have the ordinance written by April 2009, since the retailers’ progress wouldn’t be evaluated until July 2010. Writing the ordinance more than a year ahead of time would discourage retailers from even trying to meet the targets because the ban would seem inevitable, Forkish said. Besides, writing it in April 2010, a few months ahead of time, would give the county plenty of time to prepare the ban, she added.
This is not the first jurisdiction to consider a plastic-bag ban, Forkish said. The idea that the language doesn’t exist or that it would take so long to create, a year to create, is outlandish.
You haven’t been around the county much, Molina observed dryly.
Even Forkish laughed at that.
You can also read the full story about the new limits on plastic shopping bags, and read about the pre-meeting rally with the plastic bag monster.
