A lot of finger-pointing has been going on in Saint-Henri lately, over a big pile of trash.
Residents on Sainte-Clotilde Street say for over a month, they’ve been trying to get the city to remove some big waste items in front of their building. Mattresses, broken furniture and other garbage sit right by the entrance.
“It’s disgusting,” said Abdelatif Abid, who lives a few doors down from the trash pile.
“It makes our street look like a pile of junk,” said local resident Jonathan Roux, who walks his dogs past the garbage each day.
Landlord Frank Coloccia said the stuff belongs to a person who moved out on Dec. 30.
Coloccia says between him and the tenants, the city has received dozens of requests to remove it.
“Probably, there’s been at least 20-30 calls,” Coloccia told Global News.
The Southwest Borough regularly picks up bulky items, and Coloccia said early Thursday, he could not understand why the city had not taken the pile away.
“One time, they gave me the excuse there might be too much snow, but now, there’s no more snow,” he said.
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People on the Saint-Henri street feel they’re not getting their money’s worth for their taxes.
“I pay $3,000 in tax per year, and look — they didn’t come here to clean this garbage,” said Abid.
A spokesperson for the borough told Global News there are two reasons the waste is still there.
Firstly, the borough said it’s on private property, and therefore, the responsibility of the building. The landlord said on Thursday that was the first time he’d heard that, and that in all his calls to the city, nobody ever explained why it hadn’t been removed.
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“They just tell me somebody’s going to go pick it up,” said Coloccia.
The city website says bulky waste items should be as close to the road as possible without blocking the sidewalk.
The second reason the trash has not been picked up: there is just too much of it.
“The city is not a mover,” said borough spokesperson Denise Paré.
A notice will be sent to the building owner demanding they move it all.
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