Struthers councilors weigh requiring enclosures for dozens of commercial dumpsters
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Summary
At the Nov. 12 Struthers City Council meeting, members discussed potential rules to address roughly 100+ unsecured commercial dumpsters—citing parking loss, enforcement limits and potential costs to small businesses—and agreed to review targeted enforcement and staged approaches before any citywide mandate.
At a Nov. 12, 2025 Struthers City Council meeting conducted via webinar, councilors spent a sustained portion of the meeting debating how to handle dozens of unsecured commercial dumpsters across the city and whether to require fenced enclosures.
Unidentified Speaker 6, addressing logistical concerns, said the subject "is gonna be a hard thing how we go about that" and urged the group to "really look at it in a few different ways" before acting. Participants discussed the scale of the issue: "There's a 115 dumpsters in NEBO alone," said Unidentified Speaker 3, underscoring that the problem spans businesses and large apartment complexes.
Council members repeatedly raised two practical objections to an across-the-board enclosure requirement: loss of on-site parking and the cost of constructing and maintaining enclosures. "It would be a financial burden to a lot of businesses," one speaker said, noting the city would need to weigh impacts on small proprietors. Several councilors suggested prioritizing the "worst of the worst" locations rather than imposing an immediate citywide ordinance.
Speakers described existing enforcement tools. Unidentified Speaker 4 said police have at times investigated illicit dumping by identifying addresses on discarded packaging, locating owners and pursuing citations or requiring rental of dumpsters: "Our cops are... gone as far as pulling out their boxes and things and finding the addresses and going to the houses and saying either we're citing you... or you go clean out the dumpster."
Recommendations voiced during the discussion included: conducting a survey to identify the most problematic sites; targeting apartment complexes and businesses with sufficient space for enclosures; piloting requirements in small areas; and pursuing coordinated outreach with business owners before enacting any regulation.
No ordinance, motion, or vote on dumpster enclosures was recorded in the transcript. Councilors concluded the conversation by saying they would continue to study options and speak with property owners and staff about specific problem locations before proposing formal rules.