Watch: For people in a northeast apartment complex, overflowing dumpsters aren’t just messy… they’re costly too. Kent Morrison explains.
EDMONTON — Residents of a north Edmonton condominium say they shouldn’t be left to foot the bill for a garbage clean up they weren’t responsible for.
Wallie Brace has lived in the condo building in the area of 57 Street and 133 Avenue for 10 years. He says the dumpsters outside the building are constantly overflowing with garbage that doesn’t belong to building residents. There are often piles of garbage outside the dumpsters, as well.
“I’ll come home and there will be garbage everywhere. And then I’ll go check my cameras and I’ll see vehicles pulling up, dumping and there’s not much I can do. I’m not home,” Brace said Wednesday afternoon.
As a member of the board of directors, Brace says the dumpster dilemma has only gotten worse over the years.
“There’s a lot of big things like beds and couches, TVs, Christmas trees … baby strollers, baby high chairs, tables,” he said, “everything that you can name that’s in your garage that you don’t want.”
Brace says he has done everything he can think of to combat the problem, but nothing has worked.
“I even put fake cameras up to start and then it wasn’t good enough so I put up real cameras, and they still won’t stop,” he explained.
“People just don’t care.”
In recent months the problem has become more than just a nuisance, though. In October, the city received a complaint about the excess garbage. The city warned the condo board to clean it up, but Brace says they had no where to put the extra garbage.
City crews came and hauled away the load but left behind a bill; each condo unit in the building was charged $51.45.
“They’re really, really angry that they’re getting charged this money,” Brace said with frustration.
Ryan Pleckaitis, the director of complaints and investigations with the city’s Community Standards department, says the city’s clean up costs are recovered through “tax roll addition.”
“With condos we divvy up the costs and apply the charges evenly to each condo owner. This is why all owners received a portion of the total charge,” Pleckaitis said in an email to Global News.
“Ultimately, it is the property owner’s responsibility to maintain their property.”
Brace isn’t the only one down in the dumps. Aoy Maicmain owns a restaurant just around the corner and the first thing she does every morning is look outside to check on her dumpster.
“I have some surprises all the time with that dumpster,” she said. “I don’t know what I can do.”
Maicmain has even come back at night to try to catch people dropping off unwanted items.
“Sometimes (at) midnight I want to see who’s dumping, just like a spy.”
Maicmain recently posted signs asking people not to dump their items in her bins. She says it has helped a bit.
Brace says he has done the same but the items continue to pile up. After another complaint, the city came by to pick up the garbage at his north Edmonton condo in December and another bill is in the mail.
“We don’t know who to talk to, who to call or what to do.”
The city says it recognizes this is a problem and recommends property owners lock their bins and move them to more visible areas.
With files from Kent Morrison, Global News.
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