Roadside garbage out of control in St. John's, council says

St. John's city council will spend an extra $50,000 to clean up garbage along major thoroughfares, with councillors acknowledging that the volume of waste on some roads has gotten out of control.

As well, Coun. Danny Breen wants to see faster action on the Outer Ring Road portion of the Trans-Canada Highway, where the provincial government will start removing trash later this month. Breen thinks that work should have started sooner.

"Certainly on the Outer Ring Road, I think that clean up needs to start earlier. I think June 29 is too late to be doing that work,' said Breen.

"It is an important road ... When you come in the airport and you start going west, you go out over that road. It's not a great introduction to the city."

Breen said the city needs to step up its own game on cleaning up city streets.

"It needs to be enhanced above what we have now and what we approved here tonight," Breen said following Monday evening's council meeting.

"We've started fairly small with this program. We'll kind of fine-tune it, so we are not doing it every year like that so we can budget for this type of program every year."