Bay Roberts council promises due diligence before changing trash collection

By Craig Westcott

The change has yet to come into effect, but already some Bay Roberts residents are worrying about what will happen when the Town hands over responsibility for garbage collection this year to the Eastern Regional Service Board.
Councillors addressed the concerns at the Town’s public meeting last week after getting a letter from a resident who is concerned about the decision made last August to sign on to the ERSB’s service this coming spring or summer. Council agreed it will likely contract out the work because it will save money in the long run as the Town will no longer have to buy and maintain garbage trucks of its own.
“We have a resident who is concerned because of issues with services provided in other communities,” Yetman explained. “I guess we also have a responsibility as a town, if we’re going to contract a service, that we are providing for the right service. And if there are any issues in other communities, it’s part of our due diligence to go and find out what these problems are and how they have been addressed.”
Deputy Mayor Geoff Seymour said one thing that should be pointed out is that every other town in Conception Bay North has contracted out garbage collection. “There have been only two towns that have had trouble – or one that I know of recently,” he added. “So needless to say, these concerns are valid, but it’s not all doom and gloom; one town has had issues, and I think from what I heard today, that’s been resolved. But if we do go down that route, we’re going to make sure we cross all the Ts and dot all the Is.”
Councillor Frank Deering said he would like staff to check with other towns and investigate whether there have been problems. “There’s only one that we heard of, but there may be lots out there that we haven’t heard of,” he cautioned. “I was all for the privatization of the garbage, but I’m on the fence right now.”
Councillor Dean Franey said he believes there may have been issues in Clarke’s Beach and Port de Grave where there was an instance when a week went by without garbage collection.
“So, when this resident sent in the correspondence I made a quick reply telling him that we haven’t even moved on to that stage, we’re still doing it ourselves, everyone knows that,” Franey said. “When the time comes, we’ll be taking everything into account, so we appreciate their concerns. And like I said, I get my garbage picked up here in town and I don’t want to be holding on to garbage for a week.”
Mayor Yetman suggested the problems cited in other areas could have been overblown by social media and it may have been something as simple as a truck breaking down.
“Our trucks break down (too),” councillor Perry Bowering pointed out.
“It was a nice few years ago, but at one point in time we did have problems of that nature ourselves,” agreed chief administrative officer Nigel Black. “We had to actually rent a private garbage truck to pick up garbage. Since then, we’ve got a spare now.”
Yetman then called for a motion on the matter. Council agreed unanimously to endorse Seymour’s motion to make sure the Town does its full due diligence before contracting out garbage collection to a third party.