Clothing donation bins may soon be removed from municipally-owned land throughout St. Stephen.
A staff report was presented to council during the July committee of the whole meeting last week.
CAO Jeff Renaud said the report was in response to a previous request made by the committee.
Renaud said there are ongoing concerns when it comes to property maintenance, misuse and lack of formal agreements.
“Like any good problem, the more you peel the onion, the more layers you find,” Renaud told committee members on July 16.
“However, the bins have shown up over the many years, I think there were a lot of verbal approvals, perhaps over time. We don’t have any documented agreements, or at least we can’t locate any.”
That raised certain liability concerns, said Renaud, especially if there were any injuries or property damage as a result of these bins on town-owned land.
In addition, he said many of the sites that the town owns that have these bins are currently being looked at and marketed as for redevelopment.
“It’s nice to be able to have clean sites so there’s no concern about is there an agreement that these things have to be here for any period of time, so my office is suggesting that they be removed and with some kind of deadline that council can establish,” said Renaud.
Mayor Allan MacEachern questioned whether the bins that are moved from municipally-owned land would just end up in a retail location “that we have no control over.”
Renaud said that while that is a possibility, the municipality has put some criteria around clothing bins into its draft zoning bylaw, which will come before council later in July.
“Where they can be sited, things like that, so we have started the process of looking at regulating these bins and how they’re managed,” he added.
Coun. Emily Rodas said she would like to see the bins gone before winter arrives, preferably no later than Oct. 1 of this year.
“I do think it gets more dangerous in the wintertime if somebody’s trying to get in and actually get stuck and it’s cold,” she said.
Committee members voted to recommend to council that the bins be removed from municipal property. In addition, no more bins would be allowed on town-owned land without council permission.
