ATLANTA — If you illegally dump anything in the City of Atlanta, it’s going to cost you.
Neighbors were so sick of people dumping trash in a Southwest Atlanta yard on Tell Road that they started cleaning it up themselves.
“We were very concerned about the way our community is looking. This is awful,” Thelesia Lowery-Barksdale with the neighborhood planning unit told Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes. “Well maybe a week later, it looked just like it did when we first started. And then we would catch people littering and then they would get to court and they would, not get a pass, but they wouldn’t really get the accountability.”
So the neighborhood planning for this district took matters into their own hands.
They got their councilwoman Marci Overstreet to agree that the city’s long-standing litter ordinance wasn’t working.
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Overstreet sponsored their suggested amendments to the ordinance and a couple of weeks ago the entire council voted yes on it.
It will now cost illegal dumpers up to $1,000 per day until the trash is picked up. They will be required to do community service cleaning up the rest of the neighborhood. And property owners can now be charged up to 25 times their normal tax rate.
“We want to make sure we send a strong message that it’s unacceptable to litter anywhere,” Lowery-Barksdale said.
If landscapers or anyone who dumps yard debris, it will be considered littering.
The amended ordinance is also aimed at holding out-of-state investors accountable for their properties.
“Don’t invest in Atlanta unless you plan on taking care of that property,” Lowery-Barksdale said.
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