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Skagway committee backs changes to draft bear‑resistant garbage‑can ordinance
Summary
The Solid Waste Advisory Committee reviewed a draft ordinance to require bear‑resistant garbage cans for repeat offenders and recommended removing a 6‑month repeat‑offender window, adding explicit hours for putting cans out, and ensuring fines plus requirement to purchase a bear‑resistant can are clear.
The Skagway Municipality Solid Waste Advisory Committee reviewed a draft ordinance amendment on Jan. 29 that would require property owners deemed repeat offenders of bear‑attractant rules to obtain bear‑resistant garbage cans and face civil fines.
Committee members asked that the draft remove the clause defining a "repeat offender" as someone cited two or more times "in a period of six consecutive months," arguing the city should be able to count repeat offenses across years. "If you're a repeat offender, you're a repeat offender," one member said during discussion; several members agreed to recommend striking the six‑month qualification.
Members also recommended explicitly adding the hours when garbage may be stored outside (for example, collection‑day limits) because the municipal bear‑attractant nuisance code (Skagway code 8.04.035) refers to permitted collection‑day timing but the draft ordinance did not replicate those hours. The committee noted the draft already contemplates civil fines and allows a manager or designee to require purchase of a bear‑resistant container; members discussed a previously considered fine level of about $300 but did not set a new dollar amount.
Why it matters: Skagway has experienced repeated human–wildlife interactions where unsecured garbage attracts bears; the ordinance aims to give enforcement tools to require durable containers and to penalize repeated violations to reduce wildlife attractants in town.
Next steps: The committee agreed to send these suggestions to the assembly/staff for revision and to notify Deb Potter, who authored earlier versions. No formal vote to adopt ordinance language occurred at the meeting; the item was discussed and the committee asked staff to pass recommendations to the manager and assembly.
