VANCOUVER—In the back alley of Nuba restaurant in downtown Vancouver, general manager Kostiantyn Miroshnychenko, often sees heaps of trash containing everything from used needles to food waste left by the busy foot traffic at the corner of West Hastings and Cambie Streets.

And Miroshnychenko is tired of the city telling him he has to pay to clean it up.

This year, residents will see a 4.24 per cent increase in property taxes, approved by the city in December. According to the city’s budget, the increase is to maintain services.

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“We need help from the city because we pay our taxes, we pay all our fees, so we definitely need help with that,” he said.

The warmer the season, the worse the problem for the restaurants near the Downtown Eastside, where a growing homeless population resides.

It gets out of hand during the evening and weekends when “whatever you see here will be 100 times more,” Miroshnychenko said Wednesday afternoon, pointing to the clumps of rubbish in the alley.

He pulls on the locks of his commercial-sized dumpster along with others from neighbouring restaurants, showing they are all abiding by the city’s rules. Even locked, the dumpsters get broken into and trash gets tossed out of them.

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Along with paying for private companies to deal with garbage generated by their businesses, Miroshnychenko said, restaurants downtown often pay even more to have trash on public property around their location cleaned because it drives away customers. They sometimes pay these companies to clean up those areas, but it’s not enough because of the frequency and volume of litter being tossed.

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If the waste management company is behind schedule, Miroshnychenko sends two to three staff to clean up. Sometimes it takes them up to an hour.

“I’m trying not to be in a situation where it’s already that bad that I cannot even operate,” he said. “This is especially problematic because it’s a touristic part of town, so it should always be clean.”

If he doesn’t tidy up the mess, he gets calls or emails from city staff ordering him to do so. Not doing it could eventually lead to a fine of up to $10,000, according to the city.

But Miroshnychenko said it isn’t right that he and other business owners are responsible for street cleaning.

The city could provide more enforcement to catch those leaving the garbage in Gastown, explained Miroshnychenko, adding cameras could help with that.

“If somebody is going to get caught a couple of times, people will know that if you do this, you’ll get this penalty — they’re going to stop doing it,” he said.

Eastward in Gastown’s Blood Alley, Tacofino has had an “ongoing” problem of people climbing over the gates protecting their locked trash bins, breaking into the dumpsters and creating a mess.

“There’s needles in the patio all the time and everywhere,” said manager Caroline Williamson. “So we have to get somebody to come pick them up for us.”

Around two months ago, city staff told the restaurant they’ll be fined if they don’t clean it up, Williamson said. She’s fed up, too.

“The responsibility lies on us to clean it up even though it isn’t necessarily the business who is creating the garbage,” she said.

Albert Shamess, director of waste management and resource recovery at City of Vancouver, said garbage containers are licensed by the city, and part of the agreement is they must be maintained and managed by the owner.

Shamess said the city simply isn’t responsible for looking after businesses trash bins, but he didn’t comment on the problem of littering.

He said the city currently has a cleanup crew working overnight across Vancouver, and roughly two thirds are sent downtown to pick up abandoned garbage like mattresses in back lanes, empty public garbage bins, and to spray the streets clean of feces and urine.

The increased demand for cleanup and volume of litter is also challenging for the city, said Shamess. Compared to the same time last year, Vancouver has seen a 10 per cent increase in calls about illegal dumping.

“It is a societal issue. It’s beyond any one group’s ability to control. And we’re seeing increasing pressure, in the city as a whole, of abandoned garbage—people dumping garbage in back laneways, in empty properties.” The city is eager to work with businesses on a long-term solution, he said.