Lansford Borough has a garbage problem, according to one councilman.

Council Vice President John Turcmanovich said Tuesday that garbage is piling up in his neighborhood, where three homes aren’t having garbage picked up.

“One house is going on eight weeks now,” he said. “It’s not having its garbage collected. Now, I know the police had been there. Legal action has been taken against them. Great.

“But the garbage is still there. It’s piling up alongside the house. It’s piling up in front of the house,” Turcmanovich said.

Now, it’s attracting bears, he said.

“We’re being invaded with bears down there,” Turcmanovich said. “The only way we know it’s not safe to go outside at night is the neighborhood dogs start carrying on like crazy.”

He has seen bears going up and down the street, and the next morning, trash is spread all over the streets, he said.

Turcmanovich said he understands the garbage hauler doesn’t pick up trash if the garbage bill isn’t paid, but something needs to be done with the trash. He has been told by the tenants that the landlord is responsible to pay the garbage bill.

Borough secretary Wendy Butrie said either the owner or tenant has to take the trash to Tamaqua Transfer themselves, because even if they pay now, there’s too much trash to take at once.

Council agreed that this was a quality of life issue, and that they should be cited for the violations.

“My concern is no matter what legal action we take, we still got the garbage,” Turcmanovich said. “We got to come up with a solution.”

Others pointed to other areas in the borough, too, where there are garbage problems. Butrie said the 300-block of West Kline and 300-block of West Snyder avenues both have problems, because of “squatters” living in the houses.

“We got to do something,” Turcmanovich said. “Otherwise, we’re going to have garbage piling up all over town.”

Council President Bruce Markovich said the borough used to pick up trash whether or not people paid the bill. Butrie said she didn’t know how many people were paying or not now.

Markovich wondered if that was in the rental ordinance that an owner maintained the garbage bills, and Butrie said no, the bills are in the landlord’s name, because tenants were often “fly by night.”

“Then, we should be citing the landlords,” Markovich said.

He then questioned who should be citing them – police or code enforcement, or both, and if it also falls under a rental violation.

The borough wanted to hire a constable to issue quality of life citations, but the police union stated it falls under the police jurisdiction and if the borough hired a constable, the matter needed to be negotiated.

The borough’s ordinance states that quality of life violations will be enforced by police officers or “any other public officer authorized to enforce ordinances.”

Accumulation of rubbish or trash does fall under the borough’s quality of life ordinance with offenses punishable with a fine of $25, first time; $50, second offense, and $100, third offense within 12 months, the borough’s code of ordinances states. Each day a violation continues counts as an additional offense.

The borough’s ordinance also allows for the borough or a contractor hired by the borough to abate the violation, and charge the owner for the cleanup plus a percentage of cost to cover expenses and processing fees, in addition to quality of life fines.

Council members seemed to agree that the problems with garbage may be a good place to start for a new code enforcement officer. Council will consider hiring the Pottsville-based Lehigh Engineering for code and rental inspections next week.