Editor:
I live in an apartment building. Our garbage day has now been moved to Friday, which is when our “green bin” (singular) is also collected.
By Saturday, it was already full again, adding some not-so-desirable aromas to our garage area.
Said green bin is even smaller than our three blue recycling bins which are always full to over-flowing by their pickup day.
Really? This is supposed to work?
The utterly nonsensical rule of adding meat scraps to supposed “compost” (which no gardener worth her salt would ever do as meat scraps attract vermin, smell to high heaven and do no actual composting at all) is an exercise in pure ecological ignorance.
Not to mention the complete abrogation of civic responsibility in the collection of citizen garbage defies all the rules of local government.
What exactly is our council doing for us except to get a generous paycheque while ignoring the common-day needs of the populace?
The responsibilities of local government are, mostly: a) the collection of local garbage; b) the maintenance of local roads; c) water service (pity they sold us out); d) development in accordance with citizens’ wishes and acceptance.
The arrogance of our present council, with a few exceptions, is overwhelming.
Secret meetings. No citizen input. No garbage collection.
Indeed?
Amazingly, the mayor wonders why we are not “civil” when addressing his habit of running roughshod over our commonsense rights and desires for the protection and proper running of our city.
Pat Patton, White Rock
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The fun has begun! With every business and multifamily building left to make its own arrangements for garbage pickup, we now have the following situation:
Instead of City of White Rock garbage trucks coming on a designated day each week, we now have everybody and his brother’s garbage trucks filling our streets and back lanes. They service a building here, and another over there… here a building, there another. Like ants on an anthill, they are all over.
How insanely inefficient.
I read that city hall is now putting the single-family garbage service out for tender. When our fearless leaders decided to dump (pun intended) the garbage pickup for businesses and multifamily buildings, did it occur to them to put all garbage services out for tender and get a good deal for all concerned? If not, why not?
I’m forced to ask the age-old question: What are we? Chopped liver?
Pat Tietzen, White Rock
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Open letter to White Rock council.
We are proud residents of White Rock. We are also very proud of our strata. We take good care of it and its surrounding gardens.
This year brought with it an unexpected challenge in that we were required to hire a waste-management company to remove our garbage. We took you at your word and after receiving your letter, began researching companies to see who would best suit our needs both within our budget and with competency. We are quite happy with our choice. The majority of owners in this building have reached their eightieth year and all have seamlessly adjusted to the new rules for garbage collection.
However, on July 8, five large bags of garbage along with a variety of debris were left on the city laneway adjacent to our cardboard/paper bin. We have locked our bins because we have for many years had problems with strangers putting their garbage in our receptacles. It appears that instead of putting garbage in our bins, strangers are now leaving garbage in the laneway.
Garbage collection is expensive and so we have arranged with the company to collect it in a frequency appropriate to the bin to be emptied, in order for costs to be manageable.
I first called the city to ask about the abandoned garbage and the garbage people agreed that this is a city problem. However, they informed me that the bylaw people would not be able to inspect the area until a week has passed. Two of the bags had some food in them and even when first noticed there were holes in the bags.
We realized that the city, while sympathetic, was not prepared to take action in time to stop animals from spreading food around.
After discussions with our waste-management company, we decided to clear the garbage and put it in our waste bin. Because the bin had been emptied that morning we hoped it would not overflow before the next pickup. The waste-management company is aware that the garbage is not being separated. But, if we require an extra pickup, the charge will be $50.
This is unacceptable to us. It should not be at our expense when a representative of the city has told us that the city is responsible.
It seems to me that the city should have by now developed some kind of protocol to manage a situation like ours. In not doing so, the city is not serving its taxpayers, nor is it being vigilant about possible health hazards should vermin be attracted to the debris.
Your decision to make homeowners responsible for garbage collection is turning White Rock into a garbage dump. Garbage trucks from a variety of companies obstruct our streets and laneways. They produce enormous noise pollution. One of our owners counted nine different trucks passing his window in less than half a day. Furthermore, your tax reduction has provided us with only a third of the cost per strata lot.
At the present time, we enjoy noise pollution, traffic slow-downs and stress to our incomes. How arrogant of you to be treating your citizens in this way. Our beautiful city is not so beautiful anymore.
Please, at the very least, develop a protocol to respond quickly to random waste drops in our laneways by strangers.
K.J. Porter, Chatsworth Manor
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Open letter to White Rock council.
You should be renaming our city to Garbage Truck City. Since your very disorganized stoppage of the garbage pickup, we now have garbage trucks every day, non-stop, up and down the streets and alleys, causing nothing but chaos and traffic congestion.
Thanks a lot, great job, too bad it is not an election year, I am sure all the owners in White Rock would like to see the end of you.
Arlene Sweet, White Rock