Standing on the sidelines, critically observing the City Council heartily endorse a ban on polystyrene food containers, Steve Rose said history is repeating.
“Once again middle- and lower-income people will be hurt by the environmentalists,” he says.
Since the ban due to arrive in the summertime will span upscale and downscale eateries, the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce worries about the most vulnerable patrons.
“In the more expensive restaurants in our city,” Mr. Rose said, “if prices go up 50 cents or a dollar (because of the new law), those customers barely will notice it.
“In many of our restaurants that serve people with lower incomes, when the price goes up a nickel or a dime, it affects these people.”
Steering directly to his main point, the Chamber chief declared that “once again the environmental cost hits the people with middle or lower incomes more than it does the upper.”
Shifting to a different economic concern, Mr. Rose said that the most vulnerable residents “were hurt again” by drought-sparked water concerns.
“When water districts and water companies were paying to take out grass,” he said, “people who took the most advantage of this were residents who could afford to do it themselves. But they got a subsidy to do it.
Lower-income people who could not afford to do it, with or without a subsidy, were the ones stuck with paying higher water bills to subsidize people who took advantage of it.”
