Editorial: Proposed law to crack down on trashy donation boxes is welcome

Published 10:13 pm Thursday, February 21, 2019

We are free to disagree on political dogmas. We can talk about whether we should pass the proposed Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. We can debate how to improve our immigration system.

While there are myriad topics we can discuss for hours, we can generally agree that we want to live in a clean, aesthetically pleasing community. We don’t believe that’s too much to ask.

Our community has taken steps to clean itself up recently. Organizations have hosted cleanup days throughout Dalton and Whitfield County. Many days we see ordinary citizens picking up roadside trash during their daily walk. Our twice-monthly column titled “Recycle & Reuse” by Amy Hartline of the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority delivers ideas on how we can cut down on our waste and reduce litter.

Adding to that trend, we were pleased to see the Dalton City Council taking action in our community’s fight against trash this past Monday night. At their regular meeting, council members had the first reading of an ordinance that would crack down on overflowing, unsightly donation boxes that dot the city. The proposed ordinance requires a second reading and affirmative vote at a future meeting.

A photo that accompanies our story at www.dailycitizen.news shows what an eyesore some donation boxes can be. Scattered around the donation box, which was marked “clothing & shoes collection,” in a parking lot off Glenwood Avenue was the gamut of unwanted trash: a busted door, computer printers (in various states of disrepair) and clothes piled on top of clothes on top of clothes. Some people are turning these donation boxes into their personal trash cans. That’s junking up our city.

The City Council wants to require donation box owners to apply for a license (and of course, since it’s a government body, force them to pay a fee for the license). They must also provide the city with information on how to contact the organization, and detail how/how often the items will be removed from the bins and how many times the boxes will be checked for “general cleanliness, graffiti and litter or other rubbish.” These donation boxes can only be placed in commercially zoned areas and can’t be put on empty or abandoned properties. The property owner must certify that permission has been granted to place the box there.

The proposed law has teeth, too. Fines of up to $1,000 await violators. On top of that, the first offense also earns the donation box owner a 60-day permit suspension. The suspension increases to 180 days for the second violation (if it’s within a year) and the permit can be pulled for five years for the third strike (within a five-year period).

Bravo!

While we appreciate the effort to crack down on the donation box owners and those who own property where they sit, we are dismayed that the Dalton Police Department’s Code Enforcement Unit isn’t doing more to stop these donation boxes from becoming eyesores. Illegally dumping trash at these donation bins is a city code violation, so these code enforcement officers should be going after those who dump trash, the landowners that allow the problem donation bins on their property and the donation bin owners. We are also disappointed that citizens so capriciously unload their trash wherever they please.

Let’s all do better. Let’s all do more to make Dalton a beautiful place to call home.