OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor. Please send your letter to [email protected] This letter is from a Brechin resident frustrated by the ongoing issues related to the County of Simcoe's waste management collection issues.
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The pick-up of recyclable materials in the Brechin area has gradually become less and less reliable over the past months and is now entirely unreliable.
Garbage and recyclable materials pickup that has been taking place for many decades on these routes is no longer being reliably provided. It seems as though Simcoe County has made a decision to abandon regularly scheduled pickup on certain routes without giving home owners and taxpayers any viable explanation.
Over the past few weeks, the scheduled Tuesday garbage pickup has been taking place, however this wasn’t reliable a couple of months ago. In the case of recyclable materials, homeowners have no choice but to indefinitely leave the recycle boxes and recyclable materials at the roadside.
Most recently, the recyclable materials containers that were set out for pick up on the scheduled Tuesday morning (Nov. 12) were eventually picked up on Sunday (Nov. 17).
The recyclable materials containers that were set out for pick-up on the scheduled Tuesday morning, Nov. 19, still await pick up.
This semi-permanent need to keep the recyclable materials at the roadside is made necessary during this period of intermittent service because Simcoe County is not making the effort to reliably monitor the progress of garbage and recycle materials pickup.
This basic information needs to be properly and reliably communicated to all Simcoe County residents.
When Simcoe County is contacted to ask when the next potential recyclable materials pickup may take place, the homeowner is informed that there is now a phone app that can be downloaded pertaining to Simcoe County garbage and recycle materials pickup.
The phone app, however, does not provide any reliably monitored information on when the recyclable materials will be scheduled for pick up.
The offering of a phone app is simply an ineffective artificial attempt to avoid providing homeowners with very basic necessary information like a monitored scheduled date for garage and recycle materials pick up, as this information may be affected by weather and labour availability.
In August 2019 the Simcoe County Warden, George Cornell, said the following, “We pride ourselves in providing a high level of service and innovative and convenient waste collection programs to our residents. Hearing from our residents the importance of garbage, organics and recycling pick ups, we have taken the necessary action to prioritize these services. We apologize for the inconvenience and please know that staff and Council are working hard to ensure that our contractor meets our service expectations.”
It is now November, 2019 and for the Brechin area, there aren’t any signs from Simcoe County of restoring proper garbage and recyclable materials pick up.
The extended failure on the part of Simcoe County to reliably provide garbage and recyclable materials pick up is resulting in the ongoing littering of garbage and recycle materials along the well-established routes that Simcoe County has now decided are less worthy of service.
Michael B. Douglas
Brechin
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