Kitty litter and more

Holyrood councillor says some public garbage bins are being misused

By Mark Squibb

Holyrood councillor Sadie King says Town workers are taking steps to address an apparent misuse of garbage and recycling bins along both the Salmonier Line and at the end of Butter Pot Road.

“As we all know, Holyrood is known as being a clean and tidy town,” said King, who brought forward her complaint during a public works committee update on Tuesday. “In fact, we’ve gotten a couple of Tidy Town awards over the years. Our town makes every effort to keep things clean and tidy.”

To that end, King said council has placed a number of garbage cans and recycling bins across Holyrood over the years, including in non-residential areas such as the carpool gathering spot on Salmonier Line near the intersection with the TransCanada Highway.

King said some people are stuffing the bins at that spot and at the parking spot on Butter Pot Road with bags of residential garbage, including containers filled with kitty litter.

“There’s no need of that in in a town like this,” said King, who added the garbage in the bins far exceeds that of a few people cleaning out their cars or tossing out empty snack containers every now and again.

“I don’t know if it’s our residents, I’m thinking it’s not our residents doing it,” King said. “But it’s certainly not conducive to keeping a tidy town, and so we have to do something about it.”

King said the public works committee has decided to erect signs at the two problem areas reminding people what types of garbage are acceptable.

“But if this continues, we’re going to have to do something else,” warned King. “We’re going to monitor it for now. We may end up having to put cameras there, I don’t know. But we have to get ahead of this, and we have to do it now.”

King wrapped things up with an appeal to residents.

“People, we have a garbage pick up,” said King. “If you have residential garbage, put it in your own garbage bin, not in the public ones.”