BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – The city of Burlington employed a different tactic this year to prevent trash left after college students moved out of their apartments, and it turns out it was pretty successful.
The Burlington Department of Permitting and Inspections identified 11 properties that most often had heaps of trash out in front of the units. The city reached out to all of them directly ahead of move-out and let them know their expectations, and vowed to ticket them if they weren’t followed.
Only one ticket was handed out, giving the city confidence that they can mitigate the trash problem moving forward.
“It tells us that if we can expand that and look for properties that had smaller amounts of trash just to send a slightly different message, get them on task for that move-out period, we could add even more success,” said Bill Ward of Burlington Permitting and Inspections.
The city says they were even able to mitigate common dumping grounds by putting out signs and monitoring regularly.