Flin Flon’s city council has given the final green light to a new bylaw that imposes a limit on how garbage bags property owners can have taken away each week.
Councillors agreed on the new bylaw for a third and final time during their August 20 meeting, with each member in attendance voting in favour of the measure. Under the new bylaw, the City will institute a maximum number of bags picked up per property each week as part of standard garbage rounds. The new bylaw will put a cap on garbage pick-up to four full-sized bags of trash per property per week, with further bags either needing to be taken to the landfill or requiring the purchase of a specific garbage pickup tag at City Hall - three dollars each, one-time use.
The bylaw was first proposed by councillors July 16, then received second reading August 6 and got third reading August 20. After third reading and approval, the bylaw became agreed-on City policy and will now go into effect.
“We were just waiting for the time to pass so that we could go ahead and finish it,” said Mayor George Fontaine of the new bylaw.
The original bylaw, as proposed by the City in July, would have seen garbage pickup cut down to three bags maximum, instead of four - the limit was increased after communication from Flin Flon residents and from nearby community councils.
In previous meetings, some council members expressed hope that the bylaw change would keep a small number of Flin Flonners from throwing out high numbers of trash bags each week. Others thought the change could help push more people towards recycling, rather than throwing away potentially recyclable items.
“What really was the intent at the beginning was to stop the abuse of the pickup system so that we could manage our workforce in a proper fashion, by having these gluts where people were using it almost like free garbage day and as long as you could put it out in bags, it was unlimited - that doesn’t work without our system,” said Fontaine during the August 6 meeting where the bylaw received second reading.
