While Oak Bay adds a third pickup in one neighbourhood, some residents see the new leaf pickup schedule as a reduction in services.
Staff would come by three or four times for longtime Oak Bay resident Alene Cartwright, who lives in a particularly leafy area of north Oak Bay. The final pickup is also earlier, in a season when the leaves are falling later.
“The leaves this year in particular are dropping or falling later on in the season,” Cartwright said. Usually by Halloween she has a massive pile. “Mine’s the size of a chair right now,” she said. “They’re going to complete their last pick up between the second and third week of December.”
Now Oak Bay is divided into four areas, with scheduled pickup weeks. The final pickup is Dec. 19. See the schedule here.
Cartwright fears the new method of pickup will see leaves falling and left.
“That’s an inconvenience but more a drainage issue, we can’t schedule the drop of the leaves,” she said.
Oak Bay tweaked the schedule once, tagging a week on at the end for the area picked up first when it started Oct. 23.
“The leaves weren’t coming down as early as we had hoped so to the first route we added an additional time,”
Dave Brozuk, superintendent of public works for Oak Bay.
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