The summer season in the Sainte-Anne-De-Bellevue (SADB) village is gearing up as the city gears down garbage pick up from twice a week to once a week. Merchants of the village are very concerned this will cost them valuable post-pandemic dollars this summer as they get set for tourists to descend on the waterfront boardwalk.
Merchants are used to two garbage collections each week, once on Tuesday and again just before the weekend in the summer months. Amongst concerned merchants is Nicholas Hatziiliou, the owner of long-standing SADB village restaurant Violet Angel. In an email to the city, he expressed a need for solutions, as a deviation from the bi-weekly trash collection will become visible to tourists and residents of the village alike.
"During the summer season we fill up four black bins per week," stated Hatziiliou. "We’re strict to recycle everything we can. We hide our bins in a room under one of our decks because we don’t want customers seeing them. We hate the idea of having more bins in the alley of Rue du Collège that the building beside us already puts out. There is no way all these restaurants are magically going to have half the garbage."
The city cites this change in services, at a cost of $5,600, as an attempt to reduce waste and to encourage recycling and composting initiatives. They claim, in a letter to residents, that a report from the City of Montréal revealed that from January until August of 2021, SADB had generated 2.62 times more household waste than the average of the urban agglomeration of Montréal.
Jean Claude Provost, the President of the SADB Merchants Association also cites economic challenges that face the merchants: "The city offered a second collection for an additional $1,000 per week for the main village street, divided amongst the merchants. Compared to the costs from last year, the pick up cost last year for the 16 week period will sky rocket from $5,600 to $16,000. Our organization's budget of $25,000 can not withstand this increase, especially after the past two years."
"We have just lived through two costly years due to the pandemic," stated the President of the SADB merchants association, Jean Claude Provost. "The cost of the second pick up from May to October is $5,600. I think the council is missing the big picture on a city with a budget of $20 million."
The owners in the village remain persistent in seeking solutions from the city and hopefully residents.
"Even if we put aside the strategic nightmare this creates for the restaurant owners,"
Hatziiliou expressed, "there is a sanitary disaster in the making that the city will have to deal with. Maybe they'll react once the towns residents and patrons start complaining about the stench this will cause and the rodents it will bring."
