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LETTER: Oak Bay leaf pickup schedule falls by the wayside

I am writing this letter Jan. 16 in the hope that someone in city government will read it and do something about improving Oak Bay’s leaf pick-up program.
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I am writing this letter Jan. 16 in the hope that someone in city government will read it and do something about improving Oak Bay’s leaf pick-up program.

Last fall all residents were told they could pile leaves up on their property and that the district would be picking them up during the first few weeks of December.

We were instructed not to pile leaves on the streets and if we did we could expect to be fined. This was followed by a map showing which weeks various parts of Oak Bay could expect to have their leaves picked up. Based on this map we were expecting the first week in December and yet we are still waiting. In one of the Oak Bay News papers delivered to our home in January there was a note saying that the leaf pickup was delayed because of the snow which didn’t come until just prior to Christmas, several weeks after our scheduled pickup.

My suggestions to Oak Bay council are as follows:

If you are going to schedule a leaf pickup, please stick to your schedule or don’t have one at all and make property owners responsible for disposing of their leaves themselves.

If you are going to tell people they will be fined for putting leaves on the street, hire a bylaw officer to enforce the law. There are a lot of leaves on many of the streets of Oak Bay and I have yet to hear of anyone being fined for placing them there in front of their homes.

A law that is not enforced is meaningless and serves as a gateway to ignoring other rules and regulations. So enforce the law or get rid of it.

Bruce Cline

Oak Bay