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Just phone PoCo about garbage

It should be easy for municipal hall to get a cost estimate.

Editor, The News:

I live approximately two blocks from the train station.

Being semi-retired, I see about five trucks, including a driver, and at least two workers picking up garbage or just driving around. They do not pick up green stuff like bags of branches.

We either wait twice a year for the municipal recycling or pay a minimum of $7  to recycle our branches, or we select an empty  lot and place the branch’s or green stuff in a way as not to offend any one.

You can see the evidence across the parking lots at the train station.

I walk down 203rd Street and I will see bags of garbage left by others.

I know that some homeowners will get together and have 1 pickup for two-thirds of the houses, to save money.

The best garbage pick up I have seen is in Port Coquitlam, with 18,000 customers.

Example: week one truck with one driver picks up recycling stuff. The  truck stops, two arms go out and attach to the marked flip-top container and lifts up and empties the stuff into the truck.

The next week, two trucks go by, one for regular garbage and the other for garden stuff, and the routine carries on. Nice and easy, three containers marked accordingly.

Benefits:

•no sick leave for out side workers;

• garden stuff gets picked up regularly;

• households would be more inclined not to dump on other properties;

• air quality should improve;

• fewer cars going to the recycling depot;

It should be easy for municipal hall to get a cost estimate. Just call up PoCo and ask – how much per house hold do es that city charge each homeowner?

The city either contracts it out or takes it over.

Glenn Swanson

Maple Ridge

 

Leave us alone

Editor, The News:

Re: Pick up the phone (Letters, Oct. 4)

Karen Murray’s letter is spot on.

We’ve paid for garbage pick up for 24 years in Maple Ridge and are perfectly satisfied.

She is right about the black hole of municipal coffers.

Our property taxes go up approximately $100-200 every year as it is without garbage pickup added on.

Until Maple Ridge gets out of the stone age, as far as commercial enterprises with ensuant tax revenue, leave us alone.

It’s a disgrace that Maple Ridge had to wait all these months to have a large department store that coincidentally opens just before Christmas.

Cherryl Katnich

Maple Ridge