Council should turn its attention to cleaning up the city

Now that we have a new mayor and city council, I feel one of the most important priorities for this council is to get St. John’s clean and beautiful once more.

It seems that past councils have been satisfied with cleaning up downtown during the summer or have people hold spring neighbourhood cleanups where they show up for a photo-op and then it is all forgotten about until the following May.

Meanwhile, our city is getting dirtier and dirtier each day. Walk along Major’s Path and look at the amount of garbage in the ditches. Walk around St. John’s Airport and you’ll see tons of garbage on properties and in the ditches. The only place that seems to be free of garbage are the walking trails, so whoever is looking after these trails needs to be congratulated.

Walk on Duckworth or Water Street and you are greeted with the same sight. A cleanup for Topsail Road was recently organized by a concerned citizen; this area hasn’t been cleaned up since we did so back in May.

I’m sick of excuses that we are a windy city. Why don’t you see this garbage in other cities in Atlantic Canada? Is this what we want to be the known as, the dirtiest city in Atlantic Canada?

Now that we have younger members on council, this should certainly be a priority for them — get more garbage containers on the streets, have them emptied every day, have more conversation about garbage and the effect on the environment; implement fines, but get this city cleaned up.

Anna Penney St. John’s