Where I Stand
Construction/Recycling/Snow Removal
Why Markham is a great community...
First, Markham is a great place to live because of all there is to do there. Markham is safe with a very low crime rate. Has a good housing stock and is still growing, and near tons of shopping malls just minutes away. Markham is very suburban with very large and expensive houses.
Construction/ Building Permits
Living in Markham for a very long time, I have seen it develop over the years. To this day there is construction everywhere. Whether it is building new houses or fixing the road there is also problems for the people that constantly pass through those construction zones. Some problems that my family and I encounter on a daily basis is that there is too much traffic down 16th Avenue. The reason for the traffic is because there are houses being built. The builders usually build in the morning which I think is the worst time because that is when children go to school and adults start work. Every morning my school bus gets caught coming out of a street because there is no traffic lights and since the traffic is so terrible my bus has to wait at the end of the street for 10 minutes. I feel that this is a huge problem for both adults and students because its wastes people time just sitting in traffic. The city of Markham is also looking to improve down-town Markham and is currently building a arena for this years Pan-Am games.
Recycling/ Garbage Services
In Markham, our street gets our recycling picked up every Wednesday and our garbage every 2 times a week. What concerns my family and I is how poorly they pick up the garbage. When the garbage service comes around our neighbourhood they pick up our garbage and after they throw our bins on to our lawn, one time they threw it and actually cracked our recycling bin so we were forced to pay for another one because they refused to pick up our garbage because it was so badly damaged. Also, sometimes when they come around and pick up our garbage they leave some garbage left over in our bin. Also nowadays the town of Markham has become a bit picky on how to place our bags on the side of the road by putting our garbage in clear bags, and how some bags containing a lot of recyclables may not be collected.
Clear Garbage Bags
E-Hybrid Garbage Truck
Garbage and Recyclables
Snow Removal
In Canada, there tends to be really bad winters especially, last years bad winter conditions which really had an effect on my neighbourhood. Whenever it would snow really bad outside, the city of Markham's snow ploughs would be out at around 7:00 pm ploughing the snow off the roads. They do a good job cleaning off the roads but when it comes to moving the snow they plough it on the side of people's driveways. With just two days of snow and slush build up from the street road my driveway was almost impossible to shovel. It got so bad that it took my parents and I three hours just to shovel our driveway. I feel like this is a huge problem not only for my neighbourhood but for others too because some parents get home late after work and is forced to shovel their driveways or else there car would be stuck.