STONE HARBOR – At a Borough Council meeting April 19, Stone Harbor’s standing committee on Public Works updated the full council on changes to a proposed ordinance dealing with trash pickup.
After an April 5 council meeting in which discussion of the proposed ordinance led to a significant amount of feedback to the committee, the most recent alleviated several points of controversy.
Councilman Reese Moore, chair of the standing committee, announced three ways in which the proposed requirements in the new ordinance had been eased.
The goal remains to maintain a level of trash pickup service that has borough staff retrieve and return trash containers from their location points at each property.
Moore said the requirement that all homeowners go to a 64-gallon approved trash container was changed to an ANSI certified container of up to 94 gallons, which allows for the continued use of the large number of 32-gallon containers already purchased by many property owners.
Moore also said that the earlier language stating that the trash containers be within 60 feet of the curb and have access to a paved impervious pathway to the street have been deleted.
The paved pathway is no longer required. One concern had been that it would add to impervious ground cover at a time when flood mitigation efforts favor decreasing impervious cover.
There is no longer a distance requirement in the new draft for the location of trash containers on the property. The ordinance draft says that containers should not be in pool areas or pet enclosures.
There was some discussion of how a pet enclosure should be defined and what happens if “the pet is not present.” Moore promised to return to the council with a formal draft with no red lining at the next meeting.
Separately, the borough is moving to purchase “tippers,” which are automated lift and dump arms that will eliminate the need for borough staff to lift the potentially larger and heavier containers.
The next meeting of council, scheduled for May 3, will most likely see continuation of the discussion, with the public having a chance to view a clean draft of the ordinance.
