Townhouse Association canning corrals

Association rules require trash bins to be screened from public view.

The Bella Vista Townhouse Association board voted unanimously in favor of removing cart corrals from the townhouse complexes, which currently provide a space for residents to store their garbage bins.

This removal is to allow for curbside pickup, using the new trash bins that Republic Services distributed throughout Bella Vista. Residents will be expected to place their bins alongside the street rather than leaving them in corrals and placing refuse in them, wrote David Whittlesey, the association’s general manager.

“With the change to automated curbside and issuance of much larger poly carts,” Whittlesey wrote in an email, “the existing bins and corrals simply do not work.”

The majority of bins, he wrote, have already been removed.

He wrote that resident-members are encouraged to build a screen of some sort to conceal their bins, which should reduce any impact on the area’s aesthetics.

Getting rid of the corrals, he wrote, should also help to alleviate other trash-related issues, including lids being left open, cans filling with precipitation, trash being thrown in someone else’s bin and dumping of large waste items, such as tires and furniture. This, he said, has been

a significant issue.

Mary Wareham, a non- resident member who owns a townhouse in the Metfield area, disagrees. Removing the corral in her neighborhood, she said, will leave her with nowhere to place her garbage bin, and she doesn’t have any desire to place it out in the open.

Initially, she questioned the legality with the city and Townhouse Association alike. City officials, she said, told her that the laws do not require garbage bins be concealed, only that they are kept off the curb outside of the hours

surrounding pickup.

The Townhouse Association’s covenants, she said, restrict the presence of garbage bins in public view. She believes this rule is being ignored.

The rule pertaining to waste disposal under Article VIII, section 3- a states: “No clothes line or rack for garbage pails or free- standing garbage pails shall be erected, placed or maintained on any Lot or Living Unit without prior approval in writing from the Architectural Control Committee, nor in any case unless screened from the view of the general public and of the adjoining lots and such screen is approved as to the design and appearance by the Architectural Control

Committee. No trash or junk shall be placed or maintained on any Lot or Living Unit.”

Reading this rule, Wareham said, she believes that keeping the Republic- issued garbage bins in front of a home is plainly against Townhouse Association rules.

Moreover, she said, even outside of the rules, she expects it to be problematic for the community’s aesthetics.

“It still doesn’t solve the problem of the aesthetics of the rest of the place,” she said. “That isn’t really a solution.”

Her bin, she said, does fit into the existing corral in her town-

house complex.

While she doesn’t like it, she said, she will be working to acquire some sort of screen for her trash bin.

“I really, really wanted to avoid the ‘they win’ or ‘we win’ kind of thing,” Wareham said. “I’m really discouraged that David is not willing to try to work something out for everybody.”