Article: A curbed appetite: municipal officials need continuing assurances that curbside recycling programs make fiscal sense.

The accounting scandals that exposed the profits of companies such as Enron and Worldcom as being dubiously calculated shows that creativity and mathematics can indeed go hand-in-hand.

Weilding a calculator with a pre-determined goal in mind can result in the "fuzzy math" decried by George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential debates. Such a technique can also provide ammunition for two different sides of an argument, as often happens when curbside recycling is the subject of a debate.

Ultimately, city and county officials must determine if recycling programs are in the interests of taxpayers, and calculating the short-term and long-term fiscal effects of ...

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