People leaving garbage or recycling out at the curbside in downtown Owen Sound when it's not scheduled to be picked up has left the city spending thousands of dollars in extra costs to keep things clean.
Ongoing issues with garbage and recycling in the downtown core were discussed at the Downtown Improvement Area's board of management meeting last month.
Owen Sound's Director of Public Works and Engineering Dennis Kefalas says the major issue is people are putting out garbage and recyclables on the wrong day downtown. He says staff are then required to spend time going around to collect items and dispose of them, as opposed to just leaving the trash sitting on the street.
“It creates a situation if we don't get to it early, then some of the bags end up being ripped open (by animals) then the garbage gets spread around and it becomes unsightly and a bigger job to clean up,” Kefalas explains.
According to a city staff report, Miller Waste is contracted by the city to empty downtown waste receptacles on Monday and Friday each week and has been collecting additional garbage and recycling left on the streets those days.
City employees in the public works and parks departments have also had to spend time picking up waste and recycling downtown, the staff report explains.
Kefalas says there are overtime costs associated with the additional work. He says close to $40,000 has been spent by the city's public works department alone this year dealing with extra waste downtown.
One recent example of trash piling up downtown when there was no pick-up scheduled was on Canada Day. Kefalas says many locations throughout the core had placed garbage out despite the city communicating there would be no pick-up on the statutory holiday.
The city plans to start tracking costs relating to the pick-up of garbage and recycling downtown, as the current level of service is not sustainable.
Kefalas notes a brochure was developed and mailed directly to all downtown residents and commercial occupants to remind them of the scheduled days of waste and recycling collection.
“It looks like it's having some impact,” Kefalas says. “We have noticed the problem isn't nearly as bad as it was earlier in the summer.”