Litter Tipster Furious Over Huge Ticket
Posted April 3, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
We first introduced you to Neil Eastmond two days ago when he was trying to clean a trash-strewn alley near Queen and Sherbourne where he lives. Eastmond was fed up with the constant mess and called CityNews, hoping a television story would inspire city crews to come out and aid in his cleaning efforts. That’s exactly what happened and a day later, not a speck of garbage could be found in the alleyway.
But on Thursday morning the city visited Eastmond again, this time with a ticket for $365.
So what gives?
Eastmond freely admits that he has been dumping little bags of garbage in a city bin at the park across the street, but he claims city workers told him he could do it.
“He was like yeah, we see you doing it and we see that it’s manageable so that’s okay,” Eastmond recalls. “That’s what I thought.”
“I was kind of shocked and then I started thinking about it and it seemed more like a backlash from the city after you aired your story.”
“Here I am trying to go out of my way to make sure that I’m taking care of my garbage, because nobody else is taking care of their garbage around here, and then I get stuck with a fine.”
Glenn De Baeremaeker, Chair of Public Works for the City of Toronto, responded to Eastmond’s claim that a city worker told him he could dump his garbage in the park.
“If that happened, that person should not have told him that, because the reality is we can’t have hundreds and hundreds of people putting their garbage in city parks. Our parks would be filthy.”
“We’ll work with this gentleman to try to resolve the problem on his laneway and to try to help him out as much as possible.”
Eastmond added that he’s reluctant to put a garbage bag by the curb.
“When people put their garbage here, some of the undesirables in this area will pick it up, take it over to the park and start ripping through it.”
Eastmond will be pleading not guilty to the ticket and he’s awaiting his court date.
