As people in some parts of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality put their trash at the curb on a nearly 30-degree day on Thursday, others were contacting their councillor about Wednesday’s decision to hire eight new garbage collectors. “Saying that I can’t believe council - and myself included, right – that council approved $700,000 more with the mess that we’re in right now,” said District 12 councillor Kim Sheppard-Campbell, who took some residents’ garbage to the dump herself following some cancelled collections in early July. Sheppard-Campbell voted against the new hires, wanting more information on what caused the pickup problems in the first place. “I can’t base decisions on hope,” she said. “I was hoping to have some evidence there of where the inefficiencies were and how we could correct them.” District 4 councillor Steve Gillespie voted for the eight new garbage collectors. “Mistakes were made, but the department understood what had to be done and I put my trust in the department heads,” he said on Thursday. However, he does not think the move will fix everything. “I don’t believe what we did was to solve the issue,” Gillespie said. “I think it was the next step in solving the issue. I think we’re going to be back here in six months to look at how we can even do better.” The CBRM said that Public Works staff has already identified six of the new hires and that they are expected to be on the job within the coming days. Councillor Steven MacNeil – who also voted ‘no’ – said there will have to be noticeable improvements to the collection service in order to justify the additional $700,000 cost. “Our residents definitely deserve a quality service so I’m going to be monitoring this closely,” MacNeil said. “It’s going to be really interesting to see at the end of our year, what we actually come in at in terms of what we thought our budget was versus what our budget is actually going to be.” The new hires will bring the number of CBRM garbage collection staff from 18 to 26, though the municipality said that by working with foremen that number will be closer to 30. For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
