A recent City of Grand Forks open house sought public feedback on some key issues facing the city in the year ahead, and the results are in.
Through surveys posted to the city website last week as well as questions posed at the open house on Nov. 8, the city was looking for resident input on some changes to garbage, parking and speed limits that council could be looking at in the near future.
The results, while stilll preliminary, indicate that residents mostly prefer garbage and traffic services as they currently stand, but might like to see changes in mandatory recycling and yard waste services.
Garbage and Recycling
Results of the survey suggest strong support for requiring commercial and multi-family dwellings, like apartment buildings, to use green bin and recycling.
It also suggests support for moving to a tag-a-bag system for yard waste. The other options were less favoured, with 62 people online wanting no changes, while 73 wanted bag tags and 17 suggested the city discontinue the yard waste portion of the RDKB contract.
City residents also appear to prefer the garbage system as-is, suggesting the city “make no changes.” The other proposed option was a user-pays “tag-a-bag” system. 81 people online and seven people at the open house wanted no changes, while 65 people online and eight people at the open house wanted a user-pay bag tag system.
Currently, city residents pay $138 per year for garbage, green bin and yard/garden waste pick-up, with a $3 tag-a-bag option for garbage above one container per week.
However, survey results did differ between the online survey results and the open house results.
For instance, on the question of garbage, online results suggest that council should make no changes, but at the open house attendees supported 8-7 moving to a bag tag system. Similarly, at the open house, 12 people suggested the city make no changes to yard waste, while seven wanted bag tags and six wanted to excluse yard waste from the RDKB contract.
Parking and Speed Limits
On the issue of parking, residents consistently indicated the city should make any changes.
When asked whether the city should reduce the speed limit, the city proposed the following options: changing the limit to 30 kilometres per hour between 75th Avenue and 72 Avenue from Fifth Street to Riverside, not including Central Avenue; changing the limit to 30 kilometres per hour on Second Street between 72 Avenue and Central Avenue and all of Market Avenue; commissioning a study to explore traffic options; and making no changes.
At the open house, the preference was for reducing the limit on Second Street and Market (12 responses in favour), while online survey results indicate the city should make no changes (57 responses, versus five at the open house, tied for the lowest number of residents who preferred that option).
Public input at both the open house and online veered away from making changes to parking time limits, with 61 online responses and 10 in-person responses indicating council should make no change to downtown parking, the most favoured response of any of the options. The next most popular course of action suggests the city could employ two hour parking on Second Street between 72 Avenue and Cental Avenue, and on Market Avenue, with 44 online responses and seven open house responses in favour of that action.
Council has discussed using a two-hour parking limit in the downtown to minimize the number of business owners taking up customer parking spots, but it has been suggested that the parking enforcement should be a complaint-based system.
A report on the results of the survey and open house is due to be released at council next week.