Joseph Grunwald spoke in a public meeting before the Council of the Township of Whitewater Region, to ask the Council to make an exception for trash pickup fees for his Whitewater property.
Grunwald said the property was a cottage and that he took most of his trash back with him to rural Ottawa.
“I find the fee is an exorbitantly high fee. It represents an almost 7% increase.” He said. “I managed to get a property from my uncle that’s almost a 10% increase. I believe my taxes are already covering trash pickup. Some kind of exemption should be made for seasonal dwellers as my opinion.”
“We really have no support from the Township. We’re not there the day of pickup. Bringing trash home is what we’re doing. Right here in Rural Ottawa, where I live, we have trash pickup every two week. It just doesn’t make sense to me that it’s so much of an increase if the company went bankrupt.”
“I find it sort of strange that people would take their trash to the dump site, and it’s run over by
He said his cottage was at Muskrat lake, and he was renting out his other property, but was having little business.
“Nobody seems to want to go with the zebra mussels and the blue-green algae.” he said. “it’s becoming increasingly difficult, especially when we have these increases on top of the taxes.”
He said he hardly gets a bag of garbage in two weeks in Whitewater.
Mayor Moore said that they would turning this over to staff to pursue options.
Treasurer Sean Crozier said he would take direction to the 2023 budget to investigate options.
Councillor McLaughlin “I think the problem is to try to find a fair way.” he said.
Crozier said it was based on ENPAC’s property codes to determine who received the curbside collection charge.
