Niagara Falls Trash Ordinance: You Can’t Get There From Here

Mayor Paul Dyster’s administration has written a city ordinance concerning trash handling and recycling titled, “Niagara Falls Refuse and Recycling Collection Program.” A public hearing on the ordinance was held at city hall  Monday (July 14) at 4 p. m.

If you want to review the ordinance you can do that through the city’s official website (www.niagarausa.org), but the ordinance isn’t easy to find.

You could go to the city’s new webpage titled “Refuse and Recycling Collection Program” which is a link at the top left side of the city’s homepage. 

That will lead you to a page with numerous links. One link is named “City Ordinance.” But don’t bother trying. It’s going to take you to a page that’s “under construction” and blank. 

That’s correct, the roll out of the program is two weeks away and you can’t get there as of July 14.

What to do if you want to read the ordinance?

Access the city council page that is a link at the top right of the city homepage. It will take you to city council matters. From there you can get to the ordinance but it won’t be easy or logical. 

There was a July 7, council meeting where the ordinance was presented. That’s where the city ordinance should have been posted, as part of the July 7 council agenda supporting documentation materials.

It is not.

If you scroll down to “Supporting documentation for July 14, 2014 city council meeting,” you will be getting closer. One problem: There was no July 14, 2014 city council meeting. There was a July 14 “public hearing” on the trash ordinance.         

But, go ahead, click the misnamed “Supporting documentation for July 14, 2014 council meeting” and you will find the supporting documentation for the July 7th council meeting. Scroll down 31 pages, to agenda item #16, and - as Gomer Pyle remarked - “surprise, surprise!” you will find the ordinance in all of its wordy, confusing, misleading glory.

No one ever said that becoming an informed Niagara Falls resident was going to be easy. 

Or fun.

“American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.” ? John Steinbeck,