Jesse Redden is on a crusade to clean up the town, but after filing more than a dozen detailed complaints with the District of Squamish, he fears his appeals are going nowhere.
"I have been in [Municipal Hall] several times in regards to the large amounts of garbage at certain locations in town with no results," stated Redden in a Nov. 10 district complaint form. "Do we have any sort of maintenance department?"
He goes on to list litter surrounding the Squamish Commercial Area sign south of town, garbage on the trail behind Howe Sound Secondary School, trash at the end of Harbourview Place in Valleycliffe, broken lights along the Mamquam Bridge underpass, "not to mention the entire downtown area."
Although follow up conversations with staffers reveals some clean up was undertaken, he said he feels "the only reason they did anything is because I'm annoying them."
And operations budget cuts, which are impeding further clean up according to staff, are unacceptable, he said.
"What is this town doing trying to get developed and the budget is slashed for picking up garbage when it's in the bloody New York Times that we're disgusting here?" he said, referring to a recent online travel article that included a comment from a reader stating Squamish "is a dump."
He's also questioning why developers leaving their land to sit in a state of squalor are not fined under the town's unsightly bylaws.
"How can you let something like the Hudson House go down like that it sits there for another six months after people start dumping refrigerators," he said. "These are out of town developers, they're coming into our town and they leave a scab in our downtown that sits there forever."
Mayor Greg Gardner said he hasn't heard of Redden's complaints, but has heard "a low volume" of others. He said operations spend $75,000 on litter, and asked for community support in minimizing the issue.
With regards to developers, he said when financial challenges arise, property owners tend to neglect their site.
"Quite often when real estate projects don't go ahead, particularly when there's been money expended for rezoning and development permits and even building permits in some cases, it is a financial issue, so my assumption is that when money's tight, site clean up is a fairly low priority for a developer."
Redden said he wished the same rules would apply to him.
"I wish somewhere in my life when I didn't have money that someone would say 'Well, OK you don't have to, I understand you're broke.' What is that?" said Redden.
But, Gardner said, there may be a solution in the works.
"The District of Squamish - and this came from a suggestion from the BIA - is being proactive in, first of all, requesting the developers to take pride in their sites, and also looking at doing the clean up ourselves and charging it back through the property tax mechanism," said Gardner.
In the meantime, Redden has asked to see other complaints regarding litter to join forces and "really get in these people's faces." But the district has denied his request.
The Chief's request to see public complaints was returned by a staffer stating a Freedom of Information (FOI) form must be completed since the information is not "routinely releasable," as are items on public meeting agendas or on the district website.
This is to protect any personal information that may be included on a record such as home phone number and addresses, states the information and privacy co-ordinator Robin Arthurs.
However when The Chief's FOI request was fulfilled on Thursday (Dec. 3), Arthurs responded with a letter stating the municipality would not release the customer suggestion or complaint forms unless it was required by a court for legal action in order to protect personal information.
The letter stated 34 complaints or suggestions were received since January 2009, 24 work orders were handled by the operations department and an undisclosed number of phone calls to the trails co-ordinator led to clean up action.
The trails co-ordinator Todd Pope "handles requests for clean up as they are received," states the letter and can be reached at (604) 815 4962.
