The Sedona City Council did a little trash talkin’ on Tuesday, Jan. 26, with the end result being a new ordinance regarding garbage cans.
By a 6-1 vote, council approved an amendment related to the proper storage, placement, and disposition of residential waste and waste containers.
Councilman Bill Chisholm was the dissenting vote, saying that he didn’t feel the entire city population should be penalized because of the actions of a few dozen “bad apples.”
Two years ago council discussed the issue of residential trash receptacles being left at the curb for extended periods of time, prior to and/or after regularly scheduled pickups, and the implications of that for neighborhoods.
At that time, council deemed it not a significant enough problem to require new regulation, and council directed staff to take no further action at that time. Staff committed to monitor the situation and bring the item back to council with recommendations for possible changes to the City Code should the issues proliferate or become more severe.
Since that time, the report states, staff believe two issues have become serious enough to warrant additional regulation. They include leaving waste containers at the curb for extended periods of time, and waste ending up strewn about on both private property and in city rights-of-way due to overfilling of cans and/or animals getting in the trash or knocking cans over.
During her presentation, Assistant City Manager and Community Development Director Karen Osburn said that based on resident complaints, the majority of those complaints have pertained to shortterm vacation rentals.
From the time the short-term rental hotline launched in September 2020 through the end of the year, 154 issues have been submitted. Of those, 64 — approximately 42% — were related to trash.
These trash complaints related to 35 unique properties, 12 properties having more the one complaint. Seven of the complaints received were not related to a property identified as short-term rental, and these complaints were all related to trash bins being left out too long before or after pickup.
Of the remaining 57 trash complaints related to short-term rentals, the trash complaints showed 38 instances of trash being strewn about yards, streets and neighborhoods. Fifteen instances of trash bins being left out too early or late; and four instances of trash bins being overfilled.
“We are not creating these rules specific to short-term vacation rentals,” Osburn said. “We’re creating these rules in the city code that would apply to everyone equally. What we found is that the problem children aren’t really the residents — it’s the short-term rentals.”
The new code will include the following regulations:
■ Material must be bagged and securely tied.
■ All material must be fully contained within the waste receptacle with the lids fully closed and secure except when being loaded or emptied. Containers may not be overfilled.
■ Containers may not be placed at the street prior to noon the evening preceding the collection and must be retrieved by 11:59 p.m. on collection day.
■ Outside of those set days/times, containers must be stored out of sight of the street.
■ A first violation of the ordinance shall result in a $100 fine, second violation $200, and subsequent violations a minimum of $250 and maximum of $2,500.
■ The property owner[s], occupant or someone with control of the premises could all be considered the responsible party for violations of these regulations.
Osburn said an issue the city’s code enforcement officers struggle with is identifying a responsible party when it comes to something like trash.
“Unless we see someone and catch them in the act of doing something that violates our code, often times the threshold for evidence isn’t such to where we can really prove in a court of law that that person should be held responsible for whatever the violation may be,” she said. “So we wanted it to be clear that a property owner ultimately is responsible and that we could cite a property owner.”
