A recent request by Burns Lake women's hockey team, Vortex, to collect cans and bottles for recycling from the new Village of Burns Lake public garbage and recycling bins resulted in the request being turned down by council last week.
As reported in the Lakes District News edition of April 27, 2011 a decision on the request was deferred during an April 19 meeting, instead a resolution was made directing village staff to further investigate the request.
The investigation resulted in a recommendation that the public works crew continue to collect the recycling materials from the municipal bins.
The recommendation also stated that the process could be monitored for this coming season. If it is deemed to onerous a task for the works crew the topic should be brought back to council for further discussion.
In the report Carla Fox, village's deputy director of financial services said, in the past all bottles and cans have been collected by the crew and funds raised were contributed back to the public works department, into a general revenue account.
"With the new village recycling bins currently being installed around town there is a need to ensure that the bins are emptied and maintained regularly."
Fox's report also noted that the crew is responsible for the collection of all waste bins in the community and the expenses associated with this task are already encompassed in their wages.
"During the spring and summer this job is a duty fulfilled by summer public works students," she reported.
Fox also said, "If the responsibility of collecting the recyclables from the bins is assigned to an outside party [such as the Vortex team], the change would have to be approved by the union as it impacts on contracted employee job duties."
"It can be reasonably assumed that other local groups and teams would also request this job for the financial assistance," Fox wrote.
Councillors did not discuss the recommendation, other than to make a motion to have the public works crew continue to collect the recyclables from the municipal recycling bins.
The motion was supported unanimously.