Its a toss-up really, of the businesses in Haughton road who back onto our street — Mill road — who dumps the most crap in the street? They all seem to consider the public street to be their private property. According to the council, residents have to keep their bins off the street but apparently the businesses on the other side of the road are above all that, they can just dump crap where ever they want with impunity and leave their bins out blocking the footpath all year long.
Is it Jaanz School of Singing, who for five years have left their bins blocking half the footpath and every couple of months just dump all their unwanted furniture, broken props and crap on the road and path somewhere near the bins?
Jaanz school of singing and dumping crap on the footpath
Jaanz school of singing and dumping crap on the footpath by ajft, on Flickr
Next one along is the empty building where a great deal of work is going on trying to create a new business — The Sweet Greek — you have to feel a little sorry for them, trying to drum up customers with a street frontage looking like the local landfill.
Then we get to Scott’s Old Auto Rubber, less frequent offenders, but usually a bigger mass of timber crates or oily old packing boxes? Maybe its the owner of the building and not the occupants, maybe its fairies from under the cabbages, but the current crop of crates, old furniture and decomposing garden fence has been blocking half the path since sometime back in November — funnily enough, the contractors who empty the wheely bins won’t touch it since — IT ISN’T IN THE BIN.
I’m not sure who the winner is. Even when this lot all do use their bins we end up with a street full of garbage because they’ve ripped the lids off all the business wheely bins — presumably to balance more garbage in them — so the rats, possums, crows and passing drunks all manage to throw garbage out on the street. I do know who the losers are, the residents, their rates sucked into a black-hole.
Of course Monash City Council turn a blind eye — letters go unanswered, phone calls elicit an offer “to look into it”. Dumping your crap on the street, in the park, on the nature-strip or along the railway line seems to be a way of life in Oakleigh.
Updates
- : Well the Jaanz School of Singing wrote back and apologised for the inconvenience caused — all very modern and bureacraptic language — they don’t apologise for the act of littering, they apologise for the inconvenience that the person writing to them experiences, wording it in such a way that the problem is really the complainer’s, but they’re sorry you feel that way. No mention of them clearing it up though! The council got in on the act, promising to investigate and even quoting me an incident number. The council local laws officer called me while standing next to the pile of crap outside Scott’s Old Auto Rubber, expressed surprise when I told him that no, that lot had been there since November last year. I got home to find that although the council has posted little “Litter Alert” notices on the likely culprits’ property, the likely culprits don’t care and have thrown the notices out into the street where they blow around into our front garden and add to the litter!
- : So the big pile of crap outside the Jaanz School of Singing gradually went away; some of it disappeared into the back of cars of scavengers, some went into the garbage contractor’s truck, some just kept blowing up the street until the local residents picked it up and threw it away. The wheely bins are still housed out on the street, half the bins still don’t have lids, and the pile of crates and junk that’s been there since November is still sitting blocking the footpath. Maybe in another month I’ll call the council and quote my incident number and ask them when will they DO SOMETHING as well as just investigate.
- : Another month has passed and the pile of crap outside Scott’s Old Auto Rubber is unmoved, the bins are all still dumped on the street, yesterday Jaanz piled their bins high and overflowing as usual — then scavengers stole most of their dumped cables, spilling half the rest of the contents on the street. On the plus side, the contractor has finally noticed that the bins are missing their lids — or has been instructed to notice this — and so stickers have appeared on all the bins telling their owners that they need replacing, and that the owner should telephone blah-blah-blah to organise to get this done. Stupidly, the reason the sticker says you have to phone up is so that the bin owner “can arrange access” for the council to replace the bin — and these would be the bins that have been lying in the street or on the footpath for five years! Any bets on whether they do this, or whether they just ignore it?
