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At last year’s board meeting, Thursday, September 30th, 2021 at 6:30 PM, it was mentioned that a fee was charged for an old large tube-type television that some unit owner left inside the fenced area for the dumpster near the pool.
A bit off message here, those old TV tubes contain a large amount of lead which is partly why they are so heavy, and is definitely why you aren’t allowed to abandon them unsafely in the environment; it could poison the children who play near there to death if the tube were to be broken open!
Back on message here, anything left near the dumpster but not in it will cause a fine to our HSC association. This fine is spread across all unit owners equally because we have to pay the invoice, but we have nobody specific to blame for the action. “Big-Brother” style cameras were thought of and discussed by last year’s board, but no motion to proceed was started. We can come to a better solution than that if we get better at being a community.
So maybe some unit owner was upgrading their bedroom, or recently sold their unit and was not bringing that mattress to their new place, or even a random person picked HSC to dump their items. Their decision to leave it leaning on the dumpster instead of sliding it into the dumpster cost the association $210.00 which is like taking $2.21 from each unit owner without their knowledge.
Obviously, it’s difficult to get the top lids open on the dumpsters, and it’s much harder to lift a mattress into the air than it is to drag it along the roadway, but people need to ask for help with these things.
Since I’ve been on the board and before this posting, I’ve seen 4 different occurrences of people dumping things (about one per month) where I took it upon myself to dismantle the things discarded so as to place them into the dumpster. The most recent was 2 box springs and 1 large mattress at the dumpster near the tennis court. The rain had already soaked the mattress so it was a struggle to lift it by myself into the container, but if I didn’t it would have cost an extra $630.00 to the association.
In some municipalities, they have a “Large Item’s Day” where people can put out big things that might be useful to other people who collect junk for reuse. These “free” pieces of furniture inside Harrogate Square would just be a violation of the garbage collection agreement. As for Amherst generally, they have rules against this kind of dumping but they also have phone numbers to call for special item pickup accommodations.
HOWEVER!, Harrogate Square isn't serviced by the Amherst Refuse services. If we put an item out on the street, it will be there until we take it to the dumpster.
In municipalities where they have special days when large items are allowed to be put out, the collection company has a different sort of crew to do that work on the designated day. It is a way of managing costs and being efficient.
At Harrogate Square, we have a low-cost system in place where one person drives a specialized truck made for turning the dumpster upside-down over the truck to shake our trash into the truck.
In this picture, the truck type is a rear-loader designed for laborers to insert items by hand. It’s very different than what we pay for.
If somebody leans a mattress onto the dumpster, the driver needs to move the large item into a safe place before he can do the work of emptying the dumpster otherwise the item would fall to the ground where the dumpster needs to stay. Then he has to find a way to get the trash up into the top of the truck with equipment that was only designed to work with the dumpsters we have.
It’s an awful hassle.
It makes him late for his next pick-up location.
He risks damaging his back.
We must stop doing it.
We could be looking at a $300 fine here in this fictionalized situation.
This one might be cheap, like only a $180 fine here in this fictionalized situation.
One way or the other we need to do better. Be mindful of the garbage collection man. If you have a problem with a large item, contact a board member or the property manager for some help.
If you see somebody doing things wrong at one of our dumpsters, let them know about the fines or tell a board member so that we can contact them directly. If you suspect that they are not a resident or unit owner, maybe try to jot down their license plate number or take a picture of them at the scene so we can take some appropriate action.
If you need information regarding the disposal of televisions please call Amherst Refuse Control at (716) 631-7117.
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