Confirming what we heard yesterday, quote-unquote "District 4" Supervisor Ed Jew, along with Michela Alioto-Pier and Jake McGoldrick, showed up for yesterday's committee hearing to find out who exactly took those 300 trash cans off the streets of San Francisco. (Turns out it was DPW, who just went ahead and did it without telling anyone first.)

So it turns out part of the reason why they took those 300 trash cans off the street was because there's a huge amount of garbage service noncompliance among small business owners -- in even a brief survey, DPW found 125 businesses who used city cans to throw away their commercial garbage. (125!!!) They signed up 88 of those businesses on the spot.

At this point, our source tells us that Ed, the champion of the small business, objected, saying that the small businesses he knows have problems with garbage and recycling and compost services in the city because "it takes up too much room." Yeah, and so does the cable and the phone and the water service. (Note: you can get smaller recycling and garbage cans if you need them.) Does everyone he knows skirt the law?

And THEN, Ed says, with a straight face, that's why he lets his neighbors use his recycling and composting bins. HA! Ed Jew pays for recycling pickup? In Burlingame?

Our source also says that the meeting went so long that the person voted SFist Commenters' favorite public commenter, Sylvia Johnson, had to leave. We're totally looking forward to learning more about her next!