Under a new set of City of Pittsburgh regulations, putting out your garbage cans incorrectly, or leaving litter in your yard, could cost you a ticket.
A new set of “Quality of Life” rules, co-sponsored by City Councilors Bob Charland and Erika Strassburger, received unanimous preliminary approval at City Council Wednesday.
The legislation classifies several common trash mistakes as violations that can be ticketed: accumulating garbage in your yard, storing garbage cans incorrectly, putting cans out too early or leaving them out too long, and contaminating recyclables.
The city already prohibited such actions, but the process to enforce the rules was long and drawn out, Charland said. Officials in the city’s Environmental Services department would have to witness the same violation three times in a row before a fine could be issued.
“What happened in practice was that our anti-litter inspectors rarely actually wrote those tickets, and we ended up with no one really being in compliance with our litter code,” Charland recalled.
“These violations are not new,’ he said. “The only thing we're changing is the enforcement around them.”
Under the new rules, violations would cost Pittsburghers $35 for the first offense, $50 for the second and $100 for the third. Charland said he borrowed that approach — an attempt to discourage people from treating the fines like “a cost of doing business” — from similar legislation in Erie.
Charland said he hopes the bill will help clean up neighborhoods that grapple with garbage the most. His own district, which includes parts of Oakland, the South Side and other southern neighborhoods, has struggled with trash.
“My district is filthy, and it's a constant complaint in community meetings about how dirty our neighborhoods are and how the city is really doing nothing to respond,” he said. “So it's my hope with this legislation that we’ll be able to move towards a cleaner district.”
Strassburger said details of the “nitty-gritty” of the bill will be worked out in implementation. The new rules wouldn’t be enforced until at minimum sometime next year, Charland explained, once the new trash calendar is sent out. There will be a phase-in period where the city will issue warnings rather than fines.
Some misgivings have been voiced about the proposal.
At a previous council meeting, some residents expressed concerns that the fines could disproportionately impact residents who do not speak English. And Councilor Barb Warwick said she hopes the program will not be used by residents to target their neighbors by calling the city’s 3-1-1 line.
“If it ends up being just 3-1-1s and us chasing around 3-1-1s to ticket, I think we would need to revisit the bill,” she said. “It is about the city proactively going through where we know already that there are problems with this, based on all the 3-1-1 data that we already have.”
Charland agreed that the program should be proactive, and on Wednesday he amended the proposal to allow fines to be sent in a recipient’s preferred language by request. He noted that Mayor Ed Gainey’s proposed 2025 budget includes the addition of a number of new anti-litter inspectors.
“Hopefully as we staff up more anti-litter inspectors, we’ll be able to do this proactive enforcement,” he said. “We know that this isn't going to solve all of our problems for cleaning up the city, but it will be one piece in the right direction.”
Council is set to take a final vote on the measure next week.
