Photo: Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent

The rapid devolution of print journalism is regularly lamented for all the right reasons – among them the losses of investigative voices, institutional memories and checks on the powerful. A less-noted side effect is cities’ loss of revenue from recycling newsprint.

Last year Minneapolis recycled fewer than 10,000 tons of newsprint for the first time since at least 1993, according to the city’s Solid Waste and Recycling department, with residential newsprint pickup accounting for only 5 percent of the total recycling collected by the city. Compare that to 15,000 tons of newsprint recycled in 1998, more than 9 percent of all materials that year.

Everything about newspapers is getting smaller, according to department head Susan Young. “Newspapers are using thinner paper,” Young says. “The pages are not as tall or as wide, and ads [particularly inserts] are way down.”

Minneapolis earns top dollar for its recycling because residents sort by type of material — newsprint, glass, aluminum and so on — whereas many communities, including St. Paul, collect mixed recycling, which is worth less.

In Minnesota, 40 percent of municipal solid waste is recycled, according to Recycle More Minnesota, for an annual payout (as of 2006, including sales of waste to energy facilities) of $10 million.

In 2007, Young’s department added $1.9 million to city coffers by collecting and marketing sorted recyclables. This year, she says she’ll be lucky to clear half that amount, projecting a net income of $800,000–900,000: “My worst year in a while.”

That’s due in large part to declining markets for most materials. But because newsprint and aluminum consistently account for the largest shares of what Minneapolis has to market, she also lays the precipitous decline at newspapers’ doorstep.

Part of the problem: People take papers delivered at home to read on the way to work or on the job, where they aren’t as likely to be recycled — or at least not on the city’s residential collection routes.

Still, Minneapolis is better off than cities that don’t sort and are “hemorrhaging money,” as Young puts it. In Blaine, for example, residents now pay a fee of $11 per month to have recycling picked up.

A representative at Veolia Environmental Services, the private company that picks up recycling in Blaine and eight other local cities, said a single stream of mixed recyclables makes it hard to measure trends in quantities of newsprint. The impact on St. Paul is likewise unclear, where a spokesperson said the recycling point person left the city’s employ late last year.

Both Blaine and St. Paul have their recycling taken to Eureka Recycling for sorting. (Repeated calls to Eureka for this story weren’t returned.)

The impact on cities in which citizens sort their recyclables is likely greater than elsewhere, since they have a more lucrative product to sell. Young proudly asserts that the newsprint Minneapolis collects, however skimpy by comparison to past years, is still a higher-value item than other cities’ “newspaper drenched in beer.”

(Speaking of beer, beverages that come in glass are fueling a rise in tonnage for that material in Minneapolis: from 4 million tons in 2003 to almost 6 million tons last year. And that’s mostly drinks, Young reckons: “You don’t buy pickles [or other foods] in glass anymore.”)

Young will ask the three local recyclers — Allied Recycling, Waste Management and Eureka — to bid for the city’s recycling business when the current contract with Allied runs out next year. She expects the drop in newsprint to make a dent in the size of the offers she receives, but there’s not much she can do about it.

“All I can do is take what people give me,” Young says.

But recycling markets are cyclical like any others, and Young expects even newsprint to stabilize. “People want their local news. Even I, who am supposed to be really tech-savvy, … like to be able to settle in with the newspaper.”

Young has a Friday-through-Sunday subscription to the Star Tribune and expects many Minneapolis residents will keep receiving — and recycling — at least weekend newspapers.

If the bankrupt Strib eventually goes bust? Readers will take the St. Paul Pioneer Press, she says, plus there are the community newspapers.

One community newspaper, The Bridge, won’t be weighing down recycling bins on the east and southeastern sides of Minneapolis. The Bridge just published its last printed edition (it’s now online-only).

That was news to her.

Dressed in black and wearing orange armbands, 50 or more an estimated 300 bicyclists crowded a traffic median on Snelling Ave. in St. Paul Saturday morning just a few blocks into a 14-mile memorial ride to honor four cyclists killed in collisions with motor vehicles last month. The group set off from Snelling and Summit avenues — near the site where the latest fatality took place a week ago — and headed for Gold Medal Park in downtown Minneapolis. There, riders were set to meet another group riding 14 miles from Blaine, the site of a fatal Sept. 22 bike-motor vehicle crash. The memorial ride was announced after a Sept. 28 “ghost bike” ceremony was canceled because a ghost bike — painted white and decorated in memory of fallen bicyclist Virginia Heuer — had already been set up near the site where Virginia Heuer died after an SUV hit her bike the day before.

A group of roughly 50 protesters greeted the arriving masses. One of them helpfully directed the Palintologists to their rally: “Bridge to nowhere to the right.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann was the hit of the pre-Palin activities. She got the crowd riled up with a typically loopy speech, declaring ANWR “the most perfect place on the planet to drill.”

A suspiciously masculine hockey mom.

The crowd stared out at the tarmac as they waited for McPalin to arrive.

Thank God for the fucking teleprompter.

Where the hell was Tim Pawlenty? McCain’s former BFF was nowhere to be seen. They were probably afraid he’d hip check Palin off the stage.

Rally attendee George Wirtz had an enigmatic one-word answer for every question thrown at him. Why was he supporting McCain-Palin: “Truthful.” What did he like about Palin’s speech? “Country.”

Sylvia (no last name, please), from East Bethel, was a Mitt Romney supporter during the primary season, but is now enthusiastically backing the GOP ticket. “I’m really enthused about Sarah,” she says. “I like her guts.” But does Palin have the experience to be president? “She not going to be the president,” Sylvia says. “She’s the back-up to John McCain. Why are they asking if she’s ready to lead? She’s his back-up. She needs to step in if he is not ready to lead. We’re not asking that question about Barack Obama and the man that he’s chosen as second in command.”

Carol Billig, who came to the rally from Stillwater, relates to Palin. “She pretty much stands for what I am,” she says. “I have seven children. I’ve been a working mom. I have three military sons and a military daughter-in-law. One of my sons is a purple heart recipient. There’s a lot of women in this country that identify with her. She’s a hard working mom. She’s an average, middle-class-type person who’s worked very hard and been successful in politics. ”

Aaron Moy missed the speeches because he couldn’t get past security with his giant cardboard Palin bobblehead. The 38-year-old electrical engineer from Eden Prairie says he’d never heard of Palin before she was announced as McCain’s VP pick, but believes she’s qualified for the post. “There’s too much experience already over there and it’s not doing any good,” he says of the nation’s capitol. “She’s done more in her two years as Governor than the rest of them have done in Washington for 35 years.”

Denise Ziperski, from New Auburn, Wisconsin, has been trailing the McCain campaign for the last month hawking shirts, buttons and hats. “This has been really an awesome rally,” she says. “Lots of people came, they were excited, we had really good sales — it’s been wonderful.” Ziperski is uncertain where she’s headed next. “We sold out so well today that we might have to go back to Missouri and get some product,” she says.

In his Star Tribune column today (and earlier in comments at the Minnesota Monitor), Nick Coleman decried the disparity in the governor vetoing projects at Como Zoo while sparing funding for the Minnesota Zoo. (Como Zoo’s director earns $95,113.63, the city of St. Paul’s payroll department told me today.)

With exceptions for certain employees like zoo directors and football coaches, state law holds government workers to a lower limit: no more than 110 percent of the governor’s pay. That’s eased somewhat since the Legislature made changes in 2005: now, with annual cost-of-living adjustments to the cap, state employees can earn up to $144,711, even without seeking a special waiver. From 1997 to 2005, local governments applied for 56 salary cap waivers, according to the state Department of Employee Relations. Since 2005, the department has received fewer requests for waivers; in fact, according to information provided to the Minnesota Monitor, it has received exactly zero — raising the question of whether Minnesota’s once-tight-fitting salary cap is doing anything at all anything at all anymore. (No one seems to worry now about whether the cap makes their salary look fat.)

That doesn’t mean local governments haven’t complained. Last year Blaine’s mayor contended that the salary cap cramped the city’s style when it came to hiring a new city manager. “We’re never going to catch up with cities like St. Louis — and that’s who we bid against for a manager,” he told the Star Tribune.

Blaine’s gripes elicited a Star Tribune editorial for a full-scale repeal of the salary cap, said to be the only one of its kind in the country.

This session the Legislature has considered several changes to the salary cap and compensation regulations including establishing independent councils that would decide on politically difficult pay hikes for legislators, constitutional officers and commissioners of state agencies.

Meanwhile, Blaine was able to hire a city manager without new legislation or even a waiver request: a 56-year-old assistant city manager from Bloomington took the job.