Bin Rental in PickeringFrom $650, before HST

Nineteen rows on the Region of Durham’s Regional Roads List name Pickering, and they cover eighteen streets: Alexander Knox Road, Altona Road, Bayly Street, Brock Road, Central Street, Church Street, Finch Avenue, Kingston Road, Lake Ridge Road, Liverpool Road, Ninth Concession Road, Peter Matthews Drive, Seventh Concession Road, Taunton Road, Third Concession Road, Westney Road, Whites Road and Whitevale Road. Ninth Concession Road accounts for the nineteenth row, because it appears twice. Every row carries a start and an end, so being on the list does not make a whole street the Region’s.

It is listed in two separate rows, and the stretch between them is Regional too under a different name. The Region lists Ninth Concession Road from the York Durham Line to Sideline 20, then Central Street from Sideline 20 to Brock Road, then Ninth Concession Road again from Brock Road to Lake Ridge Road. All three are Regional Road 5 and each row begins where the last one ended, so it is one continuous regional road that changes its street name for the middle stretch.

Yes, and Pickering is unusually direct about it. The City lists the placement of moving containers, dumpsters or storage bins on the road or the boulevard among the activities that require a road occupancy permit, so there is no by-law to interpret. On one of the Region of Durham’s roads the City’s permit does not apply and the Region runs its own. On your own driveway, inside the property line, neither applies and nothing is needed.

At least seven days before occupancy for a regular permit, and at least ten days before a full road closure. The City puts that responsibility on the resident, business or contractor doing the work. Seven days is a full week of notice before a container may legally stand on a City street, and it runs end to end with whatever notice a bin company needs rather than alongside it, so the permit question is worth settling before a delivery date is chosen.

The permit is charged for each individual street named on the application rather than once per application, which is the detail most likely to be read wrong — a job that needs the container round the corner as well as out front is two charges on one form. Where the work requires a road cut there is an additional road degradation fee, which the City quotes as a minimum charge or a rate per square metre of asphalt cut. A container on a driveway carries no fee, because no permit is involved.

Five million dollars of commercial general liability, written on an occurrence basis, plus automobile liability of not less than two million for all owned or leased vehicles. The City of Pickering must be named as an additional insured on the general liability policy, and the applicant has to verify the cover by submitting a certificate the City finds acceptable in all respects. It is a corporate policy rather than a householder’s.

Not without asking first. The City’s boulevard rules say no person shall alter a boulevard by adding or maintaining any hard surface material, such as a widened driveway, without prior approval from the City, and requests go through the Customer Care Centre. The same rules forbid rocks, bricks, concrete slabs or anything protruding, sharp or dangerous on a boulevard. So the hard standing a property has is broadly the hard standing it came with, unless the City agrees otherwise.

The City owns it and the property owner maintains it. The City puts both halves plainly: the portion of your property nearest the street is municipal property and is known as a boulevard, and it is the property owner’s responsibility to maintain the municipal boulevard. That split is why a container standing on the strip in front of a drive is a road occupancy question rather than a private one, even though the person mowing it lives at the address.

One, and it covers a whole settlement rather than part of one. By-law 4074/92 was passed by Council on 7 June 1993, designating the entire Hamlet of Whitevale as a Conservation District. Inside a district a heritage permit is required for new built elements in the landscape, which the City’s own list spells out as including walkways, driveways and parking pads. A road carrying the hamlet’s own name is itself on the Region’s list of its own roads.

Possibly, and the threshold is published in units that translate directly to a container. The Fill and Topsoil Disturbance By-law 6060/02 covers the removal or addition of fill or topsoil and changes to grading, and the City says work involving more than two dump truck loads — which it puts at 20 cubic metres — may require a Fill and Topsoil Disturbance Permit. Twenty cubic metres is a little over twenty-six cubic yards. Provincial rules on testing and tracking excess soil apply on top of that.

Not to a Region of Durham gate inside the city, because there is not one. The Region’s own list does include a waste disposal site in Pickering, but it is privately operated: the Region says only household hazardous waste is accepted free of charge on its behalf, and all other waste is subject to the rates and hours the operator posts. So the Region’s published flat rate and per-tonne rate are not the rates at the nearest gate to a Pickering address, and a self-haul is worth pricing before the drive rather than after.