Doesn't agree with dumpster deal

To the editor: First I would like to say I have worked in the Shallotte area for 23 years and have just in the last 3 years become a small business owner here.

In all the years I have worked here, we have always placed our trash in our dumpster container, which is in the rear of our building where no one except our employees, the delivery people, the people who work for Waste Industries and an occasional passerby even sees our dumpster container.

Recently, the town of Shallotte sent out letters to business owners in Shallotte about what they claim is for “the purposes of enhancing the aesthetic appearance of the town and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of the Town of Shallotte.” This ordinance requires all businesses with dumpster containers on their commercial sites be screened on three sides, gated at the front and placed on a 12-by-15-foot-by-6-inch thick reinforced concrete slab.

Now this “screened” and “gated” also has restrictions and/or “most desirable” restrictions, such as but not limited to, metal corral and gates. Then after all this they want a “buffering method,” such as planted buffering strips, fencing, walls or earthen berms.

All this just to ensure that the dumpster container is not visible.

OK then, the town of Shallotte is concerned with my dumpster container, which is behind my small business, which most of the dumpster containers are in this town. I have made a decision and had my dumpster container picked up and the business next door to me has also done the same thing.

We are both small businesses and this is an extra expense that is totally unnecessary.

This is exactly what the lady in the paper was talking about last week, about the rockers in a store that were in good shape, but were going to be crushed.

This is corporate America at work and how small towns, wanting to become more like corporate America, do things when people move in, who have worked in corporate America.