Minimum fine of $125 for first offence

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/12/2023 (741 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon residents who fail to comply with the rules regarding solid waste collection and disposal bylaws can be issued tickets after city council approved changes to them on Monday.

Under the new rules, residents can now be ticketed for not bringing their refuse, recycling or organic bins back onto their property within 24 hours of waste collection, for leaving bulky items out without acquiring a bulky item tag, and putting contaminated materials into collection bins.

Businesses can now also be ticketed for depositing waste at depots reserved for residential use only.

Coun. Bruce Luebke (Ward 6) raised the issue of organic and recycled waste being contaminated at the Oct. 3 council meeting.

He asked about a pilot project the city had approved funding for in the 2023 budget to use a camera system supplemented by artificial intelligence to identify when sanitation trucks pick up loads of waste with unacceptable or contaminated materials.

The response provided by solid waste manager Scott Haddow through city manager Ron Bowles was that only one bid had been received through the city’s tender process and that it didn’t meet the specifications laid out.

Following that, Luebke asked for city staff at the Nov. 6 council meeting to investigate bylaw changes that could reduce contamination and improve residents’ compliance with the rules as well as modernize them.

“In discussion with staff — both with operational staff and boots on the ground — I think there’s probably a bigger issue than most of us realize with contamination with our residential bins and the yard waste depots,” he said.

“They have some initial plans on how to deal with that, but the sooner we incorporate that, the better. As noted in my report, it’s estimated that more than half of the yard waste bins that go to the landfill end up in the general collection because they are too contaminated to use in the compost pile.”

Enforcing stricter compliance, Luebke argued, would slow down how fast the landfill cells fill up, improve the composting program and by extension, make progress toward Brandon’s climate goals.

Though Luebke set an April deadline for changes to be proposed by city administration, first reading of an updated bylaw was held at the Dec. 4 council meeting with second and third readings passed at the Dec. 18 meeting.

The updated bylaw also allows Brandon’s public works educator to issue tickets and impose penalties when they see solid waste rules being violated.

“That’s an important change because it does put a little bit more oomph into our bylaw,” Luebke said Monday. “In the research I’d done on it, we had not really issued any tickets related to this bylaw in any recent memory.”

Those changes were passed at the Dec. 18 meeting, along with another bylaw amendment adding the penalties for non-compliance into the city’s compliance bylaw.

For all the new offences, residents will have to pay $125 for a first offence, $250 for a second offence and $500 for a third offence if the tickets are paid within 15 days, or $250 for a first offence, $500 for a second and $1,000 for a third if they are paid after 15 days.

“We do have videos of everything that goes in (to sanitation trucks), so everything is recorded on all pickups,” Mayor Jeff Fawcett said Monday. “That being said, city staff is always trying to accommodate should there be a new owner at a house and they’re unaware. Those kinds of things get worked through.”

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» X: @ColinSlark