Grey Highlands passes new waste bylaw

Grey Highlands council has officially passed its new waste collection and mandatory recycling and diversion bylaw.

At its final meeting of the year on Dec. 21, council voted 7-0 in favour of adopting the new bylaw that will regulate waste and recycling collection in the municipality.

The adoption of the bylaw was the final piece of the municipality’s new waste collection system. Starting on Jan. 2, Grey Highlands will collect its garbage and recycling with its new bin/cart system.

Over the past several weeks, the bins/carts have been delivered to homes across the community.

With the bylaw now in place members of council said the roll-out of the new collection system would be a learning opportunity for the municipality and they said the bylaw could be changed and amended if necessary.

“Hiccups are going to happen. In four to six months, we will need to review the bylaw. We’ll review with director Moyer how this rolled out,” said deputy mayor Dane Nielsen.

Coun. Nadia Dubyk said once the new collection system starts operating, council will start getting data about how it functions.

“We’ll probably be seeing updated scenarios and tweaks. They will be coming through pretty quick,” she said.

Mayor Paul McQueen raised the possibility of the municipality treading lightly when it comes to some of the provisions in the bylaw. McQueen noted that the bylaw includes fines if residents don’t bring in their bins/carts by midnight of collection day. McQueen said Grey Highlands has a number of seasonal residents and suggested the municipality go easy on the fines in the bylaw during the early days of the new system.

“It’s a heavy gun,” McQueen said of the fines.

CAO Karen Govan said there will be an adjustment period in the early days of the new system and assured council that bylaw enforcement would not be cracking down on local residents.

“There has to be a lot of patience on everybody’s behalf for something of this magnitude,” said Govan. “We will not be having bylaw enforcement out there ticketing and fining people on day two. The first six months of this will be about education.”

McQueen also ensured Grey Highlands residents that the municipality would be monitoring how everything works very carefully.

“We’re here to work through this. We’re entering into a new system. It’s a work in progress,” he said.