Saturday February 26, 2011

Ladies and Gentlemen

February is drawing to a close - can spring be far away? It’s not been a bad winter for the Town’s snow plowing budget.  Let’s hope there are no surprises in March.

With spring comes gardening. On Monday February 28^th at 7:00 pm at the NSSRC you are invited to participate in a discussion to start a “Community Garden” in Midland.

That’s it until Friday March 4^th when Garfield Dunlop is holding his annual Lasagna Dinner in support of Wye Marsh. Sittings are at 4:30, 5:30 and 6:30. Tickets are $10:00.

This past Thursday the County released a statement indicating that our garbage collection was going to be changed to “user pay” next year.  The Green Bin and Blue Box collections would remain the same but every bag of garbage would have to have its own tag. While many details have yet to be decided upon, including the cost of a tag, this system will help us all realize that there is a cost to every bag of garbage that we put out.  And by reducing the amount of garbage we produce we can save some money. Two issues people keep raising:

-          Is this a new cost/tax?    The answer is no. Each household currently pays for its bag(s) of garage through the waste levy portion of your municipal taxes. The garbage portion of the levy will go away and will be replaced by the bag tag fee.

-          People will just throw their garbage in the ditches.   Approximately 60 communities use bag tags. They have found that when the system came into effect that there was a short term increase in unlawful garbage disposal but typically after three months it returned to the “normal” level.

And finally, advance notice of some upcoming meetings:

-          The first of the Council strategy session meetings should be announced to take place during the next two weeks (no date yet). These are public meetings.

-          The Planning Department will be organizing a special public meeting to hear your views on what areas of Town should be set aside for future industry and what areas will be for other uses.  An important discussion about our future. (no date yet)

Gord McKay