Town council is joining other district municipalities in the push to find a local operator of a bus service between Fort Frances and the Lakehead as opposed to an application from Caribou Coach of Thunder Bay.
“We have received a letter from Howard Hampton’s office in regards to this resolution and we believe that a local private-sector solution should be found that would service all the communities in the area,” Coun. Sharon Tibbs said at last night’s regular meeting.
Also last night, council discussed the local Blue Box program. Clayton Sampson, the Northern Ontario Blue Box technical advisor, looked over the town’s recycling program in hopes of reducing its operating cost.
Sampson wrote in a report that the purpose of the Blue Box program is to increase the recovery or diversion of waste that is recyclable from ending up in landfills.
“Right now we have a depot system and glass is an issue because it can’t be recycled here,” Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown told council.
“Brampton, Ont. is going to be fully operational by the end of the summer and we’ll have an opportunity to bring our recycled glass to Brampton,” he added.
Another project in the works is construction of a depot site behind the Public Works building on Fifth Street West, where residents can have access to recycling bins 24 hours a day.
The goal of this is to make it easier for residents to recycle if, for instance, they were out of town for a period of time or had additional recycling from “big box” items like televisions.
There also was discussion regarding user fees being implemented for bagged waste.
“Right now we’re on a partial system and he [Sampson] thought there could be an opportunity to lower our cost and take user fees off the tax roll because right now we’re subsidizing user fees right now with taxes,” Brown explained.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
