Waste collection in Rosetown that was occurring on residents' front streets will once again be shifting to back-alley collection beginning May 1st. The shift from back-alley pickup to front street pickup occurs every spring in Rosetown. The policy is meant to help prevent damage to back-alleys while the snow melts.

Just prior to this year's spring shift, a survey appeared on the Town of Rosetown's website. The survey encouraged residents to state their preference for waste collection in the front or back-alley. It also provided a space for those participating in the survey to leave a comment or note. 

Before the survey even officially began, Rosetown residents expressed concern that council was considering permanently changing waste collection. There was also concern that Council was considering changing the waste collection contractor. While some of these conversations saw residents express frustration at possible policy changes, Mayor Trevor Hay says the engagement and conversation that occurred about waste collection is exactly what survey was meant to spur.

"When I want to talk about engagement with the community, it doesn't have to be good or bad. There's passion around town and that's what I like to see. It doesn't matter to me if it's front or back street pickup, but people have a specific things they have passion for. There was lots of conversation about it. I thought it was just excellent. Whether it's good or bad doesn't matter. Just the information that comes out and how you use that information to be more knowledgeable about your community. For me it's a positive. Even if there is negative comments, you take that negative and you can make it a positive. People were upfront, and I like that."

While the survey focuses on preferences for waste-collection, Council was, at least at the time, not considering any changes. The survey was really more of an experiment in the process. Council and administration wanted to get familiar with the technology on the website, and how to engage residents to participate. Council is hoping to conduct more surveys in the future to help better inform their decisions.

"It's definitely a big picture of something we want to start, to have more engagement with the community. It's come up a few times about having a survey. I thought this might be good topic to try. I've had lots of people talk to me in the streets, around town, asking about front street pickup. So we thought, let's run a survey let's just see what people want. I think you could guess that people like the back alley pickup. But people ask about the front street pickup. So let's send out a survey. Let's give this a try, see what works. We can work out some kinks by just trying it and going through this process," Mayor Hay said.  "Let's use our website, get some opinions, get some comments about what people like, what they don't like, and let's see where it goes. It was an experiment. We want to have more engagement. This gives people an avenue to easily tell us what their thoughts are. I think, especially during COVID, we can't have big public meetings. So this is just away to send out some some questions and receive answers. It just provides Council with knowledge."

There has been no word yet on how successful the survey participation was. Administration will collect the data and comments that were left, and Council will no doubt review the material. Whatever the participation level, Mayor Hay is confident residents will engage with future surveys.

"I am very interested to see when it's all finally done. See what the numbers are like. To know how it operates, how many people we get involved in it, and maybe as we go down the road more people get involved. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to reach out, trying to give people a voice. This just helps immensely with decision making, because we know what the public thinks. We always want to make the best decision we can at the time, and this is part of that process."

Rosetown residents should also be aware that compost collection will begin on May 4th.