Dear Member of City Council & City Administration,
First of all, let me tell you that when I send you the e-mail about keeping our City clean (part 1) on March 22 after 3 o clock in the afternoon, I somehow didn’t know that there was a council meeting that night to establish this new committee in regard to Being Proud of keeping our City clean or that it was on the agenda.
I do hope that you will still consider very seriously the ideas that I shared with you in that e-mail about working with our Provincial Social Services in regard to hiring on a ‘part-time basis’ some of our citizens on social assistance. [They could help to] keep our city clean in the spring and fall clean up that this new committee intends to organize but also [maybe] consider offering some of those citizens the chance to work for the city on a variety of projects. Citizen on social assistance can earn a certain amount of money without being penalized for doing so. As I mentioned to you in that e-mail, we already have some citizens on social assistance that do work at Mosaic Place for food concession. They were paid in cash at the beginning, then they we’re given some kind of credit card they could use in certain stores. Many citizens on social assistance are already helping the city to get clean for free by collecting all kinds of empty beverage containers to try to get some revenue to survive.
Another important point I want to share with you is this:
Last years I had put my old clothes dryer close to the back alley in preparation to bring it to our recycling depot here in town.
Within a few days of doing that I did received a letter from city hall telling me to remove my dryer because it didn’t belong there, which I did.
Now, I invite any one of you to go have a little drive (and perhaps a little walk) around our Superstore on Thatcher Drive. Have a good look at all the garbage of all kinds that lies on the ground along the fence and driveway on the east side of the store toward the back. Have a good look at the back as well; there is also lots of garbage there waiting to be blown away.
Keep driving towards Diefenbaker Drive and you will see lots of plastic bags and other kinds of garbage stuck on metal fences that surround a parcel of land on both the left and the right.
Now, I believe that if we are truly serious about keeping our city clean, the city administration should be immediately sending the same personnel that they sent to my back alley to verify if my property didn’t have anything that shouldn’t be there. The Superstore, as well as the owners of all those properties in the area that surrounds the back of the store that have garbage lying around should also, in my view, receive a letter from the administration telling them to clean up their property. As some may say, you are the ones in charge, DO SOMETHING ABOUT ALL THAT MESS and look around the city to see if there is other places like those. Go have a look behind the Cosmo Centre for example.
In regard to this new committee of champions, as our City Manager like to call it, I wish you all the best in your new adventure and rest assured that if I have other ideas I will be sharing them with you all. I do hope that by having our school system involved in this committee, our children will be well- educated in regards to the importance of keeping all of our environment clean. Those children then may be inclined, as well, to teach their elders that caring for our environment is the right thing to do because then they will know that the way we [society] live presently is the real cause to this drastic and destructive climate change that our little planet is just starting to experiences.
Best Regards to you All,
Michel Labonte
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
