City council will weigh its options when it comes to fighting illegal dumping in Windsor.
According to a report going before council Monday night, 3-1-1 complaint calls about illegal dumping on municipal property have increased by 29 per cent since 2015.
Administration explored four options; a satellite depot in west Windsor, a dedicated cleanup crew, expanding the bulk clean-up program, or enhancing enforcement.
All four options carry a price tag, but administration is recommending option four at a cost of $105,000 annually with $45,000 in start-up costs.
The city currently has four cameras in place with additional cameras costing $12,000 each to help a dedicated by-law enforcement officer catch people in the act.
Ward 3 Councillor Rino Bortolin is more interested in seeing free bulk pickups. He feels added enforcement at one location will just push activity somewhere else in the city.
"I do get a lot of calls from angry residents who get by-law infractions for something they didn't know about, they didn't know there was a mattress or something leaning up against their fence and it's not theirs; somebody had dumped it there," he says. "They get the by-law infraction and they're really upset about it."
Bortolin says the majority of junk finds its way onto municipal land anyway.
"Things eventually find their way into parks, alleys, roads, and sidewalks. We have to pick them up because they're on our property," says Bortolin. "We already spend upwards of $100,000 on that, so imagine we took that $100,000 and added a little bit too it and that impacts all four of those programs."
He says picking up items up might free up resources elsewhere in the long run.
"You're talking about the program costing roughly $150,000 to $180,000 for an entire program across the city. We would probably reduce the calls to our current by-law officers 10 to 20 per cent and it would probably open up the ability for them to focus on other issues," he added.
The city currently offers curbside pickup of bulk items twice a month at a cost of $10 per item - there's a two item limit per household.
Bortolin says administration will be looking for direction Monday night, and a solution will be debated further during budget talks.