A member of Windsor city council wants to know more about how the city's alleys will be maintained in the future before any decision is made about eliminating garbage collection from the alleyways.
The city's Environment, Transportation and Public Safety Standing Committee voted in favour of a motion from Ward 4 councillor Mark McKenzie during Wednesday's meeting, which called for the issue to be deferred until administration provided an Alley Minimum Maintenance Standards report.
McKenzie says in certain parts of the city with grass alleyways, it's the residents who are responsible for maintaining them.
"In certain areas of the city they have concrete alleys, so the garbage is picked up in the alley," he says. "But what's going to happen in to these alleys once the city has divested all of their interests from these alleys?"
McKenzie requested the report because he says he's worried if the city is divesting all of their interests from the alleys then we're going to say to the residents "now it's your problem, you do something about it"
"I just don't want to see us go down this path where we're now just giving up on the alleys totally, and that's my worry, especially in areas around Walkerville and Erie Street," he says.
Only Ward 3 councillor Renaldo Agostino voted against the motion as he wants to see garbage collection removed from the alleyways in his ward, mostly downtown, as a way to eliminate waste issues and improve security.
Agostino says this is about garbage and safety and feels the maintenance is a different issue.
"When you leave the garbage in the back it's out of of sight and out of mind. There's a lot of people rummaging through garbage, there's students living 14 people in a house that don't know any better, that you have to put lids on your garbage cans. Their alleys are becoming bomb shelters, it's a disaster for people," he says.
McKenzie says he hopes administration comes back with options when it comes to alley maintenance standards.
"I admit that alleys are a problem all over the city, especially in my ward and Ward 3, which is councillor Agostino's ward. We are seeing issues in the alley but by moving garbage to the front, I'm not fully sold that this will fix the problem we're seeing in our alleys currently," he says.
Agostino says the report has nothing to do with garbage.
"There's also alleys in this city that don't have garbage pickup, so it's a report in regards to the alleys and the future of the alleys, and what to do with them. The garbage and safety situation is a totally separate issue to me," he says.
Agostino says moving garbage collection to the front street would improve some of the alleys in his ward.
"People are just throwing their garbage in the back, out of sight, out of mind. Nobody sees what anybody is doing, there is zero accountability. Then in a few hours it get ripped apart by animals, it gets search through by people. I feel bad for the people needing to do that, no question about it, but it's not helping the situation," he adds.
The committee had been asked to approve moving residential alley garbage collection to curbside collection, where possible, to improve collection efficiencies.