Dear Editor:
Homeowners and residents in the District of North Vancouver are slowly waking up to the harsh plus and minus realities of the DNV’s new automated recycling, organics, garbage collection policy: higher utility bills; lower limit of allowed weekly yard trimmings; no more six biodegradable brown bags; no more three foot-long tied bundles of twigs and cuttings; mandatory industrial carts difficult for senior citizens and the disabled to store, tamp down and maneuver; additional charges for extra carts; additional charges for organics based upon gross weight; philosophy that potentially discourages maintaining private property, neighbourhood streets and community “green spaces,” while favouring the elimination of same.
But more and more homeowners and residents are beginning to awaken from their slumber and are now asking a multitude of questions: Has Mayor Richard Walton and council previously elicited any community-wide input or sponsored any public debates on these issues before the new policy was ever enacted? Has the DNV already consulted senior citizen groups and disability organizations on the practicalities of its new collection policies? Will homeowners now receive a monthly discount on their utility bill if they participate in some kind of community or district sponsored ‘“green space” beautification initiative? Will the DNV’s new collection policy further encourage the “knockdown” of traditional North Shore style homes and decimation of their lush green, landscaped gardens and grounds? Will the new policy adversely impact upon every community’s specifically unique OCP needs that call for the protection and preservation of its green spaces?
The DNV apparently now is assessing the efficacy of its new wheeled industrial organic and garbage cart system in its Zone 1 (Capilano corridor). Community feedback can be sent to: [email protected] and to [email protected].
As one homeowner in the Capilano corridor already has commented: “My major complaint would be the inconvenience of storing these gigantic bins. They either block passage at one side or the other, fill up your backyard and you have a lot of awkward travelling to make it to the curb, or they make quite an eyesore stored in your front yard or against the front of the house – so much for curb appeal! But I guess it’s nice that the collectors no longer have to overexert themselves and miss work on occasion from sore backs and aching joints ... .”
The constant downgrading over the years of the importance of feedback from community associations and their residents has meant that too often residents and their associations are left completely out of the loop on critically important new policies such as the DNV’s automated curbside collection policy. At the beginning of the assessment process in Zone 1, this writer-homeowner made the effort to send an email to DNV mayor and council to raise these issues and concerns, but neither received an acknowledgement nor a reply.
Perhaps if more community feedback had been elicited prior to the implementation of the DNV’s new policy, as in former years when community and resident associations played a more active integral part in devising the specific OCP needs of their community and that of the North Shore’s future, many of the questions and issues raised here no doubt would have already been answered and whatever unnecessary concerns allayed.
Jerome Irwin
North Vancouver
Jerome Irwin was the founding president of the Lower Capilano Community Residents Association in 1984 and ever since has been a writer-activist-organizer on a number of North Shore environmental, heritage and community issues.
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