BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter from Bob Ossowski, who was a candidate in the recent municipal election, is in response to 'Yard waste collection one week behind schedule in Barrie,' published Nov. 11. Also, please note the following letter was received shortly before the recent snowfall.
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The City of Barrie has a lot of pressing issues. Noise, housing affordability, crumbling roads and homelessness just to name a few. Yard waste pickup must be way down the list, or is it?
If you ask a Barrie resident what they expect their property tax dollars to be spent on, you will get answers like safe streets, streets plowed and my garbage picked up.
Garbage pickup, including yard waste, is a basic service that you expect the city, or in this case, the company that is contracted to do it, to be able to carry out as required.
The ability to collect yard waste recently collapsed. The city claims that this fall they are overwhelmed! They added that pick-up would be done the following day.
In my area of Ward 2, it was picked up a week later. In Allandale, they are going on their second week without pick-up. Fortunately, we were blessed with a run of great November weather.
Some readers may not think that this is a big deal. The city has very well paid managers who are responsible for ensuring services are carried out. In many cases, senior managers are making far more than the average resident.
In this case, the ball has been dropped and no one is picking it up. A satisfactory explanation has not come from the city, the mayor or the contractor. We need answers and we need accountability.
The inability of carrying out basic services is a symptom of a far bigger problem.
Bob Ossowski
Barrie
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