From Neil Seidler
We went to the information meeting at the school Saturday. “There will be no up front fees or charges when you receive your new carts.” True, but there is a “$5.00 PER YEAR” additional cost for 5 years starting in 2019. Or is that going to be turned around and add up to a $25.00 increase by 2024. Cash grab or what. Then what?
We were informed there would be no additional costs for the change over, “TRUST US COMES TO MIND”. Will this end up like the water consumption fees that were supposed to only go up to a set limit but went up over that and continue to go up because households further limit their water use and zero scape their yards. The weeds on the boulevards and in yards, dead, dying or stressed trees just keep increasing. Makes Oliver look so good. So the town now brings in less and less each year for water use. We were told that the increases on the amount of water used was for infrastructure, but isn’t that what, the delivery charge part of the bill is for.
Back to garbage, we were told the cost increase is related to tipping fees at the landfill. If tipping fees go up in the future will our collection fees increase by that amount or maybe just a little more? You know like a cash grab. Will I or anyone get a rebate on our collection fees? We didn’t put out our household garbage this past week because we only had two small bags in the can and it’s not worth the time to put it out some weeks. Or if we only have to put our carts out once a month do we get a cut in our garbage pickup fees our will we subsidize those with full carts each week. We were also told there would be times in the year that we would be able to put out additional yard waste, in paper yard waste bags, for collection. “TRUST US” comes to mind again as the info sheet handed out says “additional items outside the carts will not be picked up”. As one familiar with this method of collection I can see why only the cart can be used once started, that means a different truck would have to pick up the extra yard waste or more or bigger carts used with additional costs. On the info sheet it says the “carts are proven to be clean and convenient”, one of the carts they borrowed from Penticton had some loose house waste stuck in the bottom of it because no bag was used in it. Yet the info sheet says to “use garbage bags in the black garbage carts.” Do we or don’t we? Do the small waste bags we use now count as a bag in the black cart? Or do we need to buy bags that fit the black carts and use one per week? Those with large amounts of household garbage will need to order the larger 240 L cart and pay an additional $60.00 per year.
Will we have to use water to clean them out or can we go down to the river some dark night and rinse them out there? NO! That would increase the carbon footprint and dirty the water downstream and we want to be more environmentally friendly, don’t we. Costs just keep on going up when things aren’t thought out fully. I think more time should have been spent getting things right, or at least had someone sit down with them and go over the hand outs and get them right. I’m not against this system, just the way they are going at it, the misinformation or at least misleading information on the handouts, seems like we have to like what we get our lump it. Diplomacy goes a long way when working with taxpayers.
Maybe we can borrow Penticton’s PR person to smooth things out with us poor uninformed voters, after all we just don’t get it, do we.