When the Canora town council passed its new garbage collection bylaw earlier this spring, the decision was made to not give any contractors a gate key to the nuisance grounds.
Randy Gazdewich, who operates a tree trimming and removal business, used to pay $150 per year for the gate key. Now he can haul branches to the nuisance grounds only when it is manned for a limited number of hours three times a week.
He said he has to work five days a week or more to make a living and every job involves taking branches and trees to the nuisance grounds. For some bigger jobs, it was common to take four or five loads per day. He can’t do it all these jobs only when the nuisance grounds are open.
It seems this problem has snowballed from other issues with the nuisance grounds like fires and materials being stolen, Gazdewich said. When the problems arose, council’s first step was to blame the people with keys. At the beginning of the year, council decided to raise the cost of having a key to $300 per year.
That seemed ridiculous because landscape contractors haul compostables for which there is no cost to haul to the nuisance grounds, Gazdewich said. During the February 9 town council meeting, Danny Rakochy, Randy Gazdewich and Bob Kolodziejski formed a delegation to complain about the increase.
The three were rather shocked to find council members so argumentative with words such as “having a key is a privilege.”
It was obvious from the very beginning that council was not going to budge on the fee, but to later find that the town would not even accept the $300 fee for a gate key was hard to imagine, Gazdewich said.
Unaware that gate keys were no longer available, Gazdewich was doing a job on May 2 and he went to the town office and paid $300 for a gate key, which was given to him after he signed for it. The next day, he received a phone call from the town office asking him to return the key. He did and his $300 was returned.
Now, he says he is at a loss knowing what to do. He tried talking to the chief administrative officer Michael Mykytyshyn who said council made a decision not to give any keys to anyone. He reiterated that having the key was a privilege not a necessity.
Gazdewich argues it is a necessity for his business. Without access to the nuisance grounds, he can only work half time. And sometimes it will be less than that because it may be raining or too windy to work on the days when the nuisance grounds are open.
It seems that council’s main beef with handing out gate keys is that contractors may haul something to the nuisance grounds that are not compostables, he said. It has happened but Gazdewich said it was always with the pre-arrangement with the landfill contractor. After hauling, the contractors come back to the grounds when the landfill contractor was working and pay for the loads they hauled.
“It’s a trust issue,” he said.
However, council has not given a reason why the gate keys are no longer available, Gazdewich said.
Meanwhile , he has customers calling for him to trim or remove trees and all Gazdewich can do is put them on a waiting list. He is hoping that public pressure may make council revisit its decision or his only hope will be that a significant number of new members to council will be elected in the fall, and hopefully will be more friendly to local business.
