If you think that the city streets are clean and that the snow is removed expeditiously and on time, call the mayor's brother, Marcel and congratulate him. If not, read the following article and, if you agree with the conclusions, call the mayor (514-872-3101) and let him know. After all, Marcel Tremblay is the person on the executive committee responsible for these dossiers and elected people are supposed to be there to give the buck somewhere to stop.
In most of the sensibly organized world street cleaning is the lowest paid of jobs and serves to create employment for many people who would otherwise be out of work. However, in Montreal street cleaning is all done by highly-paid city employees who consequently have little enthusiasm for the menial work of pushing a broom or hefting a shovel. In Montreal we use noisy and expensive "Madvac" vacuum cleaning machines to clean the sidewalks, not for cost efficiency but rather to help justify labour cost inefficiency. For the same reason, gutters are cleaned by big machines rather than by people pushing brooms who would then bag the waste.
However, our blue collar workers cannot be given brooms because it would underline the absurdity of their inflated salaries (in relation to the private sector). How could you justify to the public that pushing a broom is worth more than $50,000 a year when many families live on total incomes of less than half of that while doing work that is usually far more demanding?
To make matters worse, cleaning work is done in the daytime so as to avoid contract-necessitated overtime pay but also because the Tremblays (big and little) want you to see your tax dollars at work.
Meanwhile, teams of two people with bristle brooms, shovels and bundles of garbage bags would be fully capable of cleaning each of our major streets' sidewalks and gutters as long as the work was done in the small hours of the morning. Following this plan, the dirt and garbage would be swept up by the same workers and left in bags along the sidewalk to be picked up by garbage trucks before the traffic started in the early morning. It would then be possible for water spray trucks to pass and to leave the streets sparkling and the air fresh and pleasing to breathe.
In this way the population would become accustomed to a city that started every day clean and free of litter and dirt, and continuing cleanup would become increasingly simple. People tend to respect a clean environment more than a dirty one.
Of course, it is not just the fault of the Tremblay brothers and their lacklustre administration. Montrealers are also to blame for many of their lazy habits such as failing to clean up in front of their own homes or businesses. However, we pay our taxes to pay for cleanup services and currently the city is not fulfilling its part of the job.
Municipal administrators of the Tremblay ilk also like to blame on-street garbage problems on people who sneak out from apartment buildings and fill the public bins with household waste. Of course they do. People who live in apartment buildings that lack garbage storage rooms or secure outside bins can hardly be expected to store food waste for three or four days at a time in the summer.
If Marcel or Grald Tremblay had to store rotting summer garbage waste in their homes for days at a time, the problem would be solved overnight. The solution is simple enough and merely requires the reallocation of existing resources. Private homes with outdoor spaces to put secure metal garbage cans and apartment buildings with storage rooms could easily get by with one instead of two garbage pick-ups per week and this would free up the resources necessary for servicing other, more pressing needs.
With better allocated pick-up resources, on-street garbage bins could, as necessary, be emptied every day (in the summer at least) while those older apartment buildings unable to provide either indoor or outdoor storage for garbage should get more frequent pick-up (daily if necessary). Those of us fortunate enough to live in relative comfort should be prepared to give up a little of it for those living in less privileged conditions.
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