Cooper City HOA and Townhouse Trash Can Cleaning: A Guide for Boards

Cooper City's code sets when a cart goes out, when it comes back and where it is kept. Section 8-26 allows carts at the swale no earlier than 24 hours before pickup and requires them to be removed by 9:00 a.m. the following day. The city's solid waste page asks for the same day.

Between pickups the code wants the cart in a garage, behind a privacy fence or hedge, or in the side or rear yard, set back at least as far as the wall of the house nearest the street. A first violation is a $150 fine and a repeat is $250.

Two more rules matter to a board:

• The carts belong to the hauler's system. Under section 8-24 the franchise hauler provides the containers, and Coastal replaces lost or damaged carts at no charge.
• Bag the garbage, close the lid. The city tells residents to bag all garbage to keep carts clean and odor-free, and to keep all of it inside the cart with the lid closed.

Nothing in the code asks anyone to wash the cart, and the truck only empties it.

HOA and townhouse communities in Cooper City need cart cleaning because every home has its own cart and the code keeps it beside the house. In a community of dozens or hundreds of homes, a cleaning left to each owner happens unevenly, and one neglected cart is enough to bring flies to a whole row on collection morning.

The housing makes the point. By the Census Bureau's count, about nine in ten Cooper City housing units are single-family homes, and roughly one unit in six is a townhouse or other attached home. Planned communities such as Monterra, Rock Creek, Embassy Lakes and Country Glen run on associations, and Monterra also has its own community development district for its common areas.

Townhouse rows feel the problem first. Carts stand close together at the curb and close to front doors, and a cart kept in a narrow side yard or a garage never dries in the sun between pickups.

Yes. A Cooper City homeowners' or townhouse association can contract The BinFather for the whole community, so every home's cart is cleaned on the same schedule. We clean at the curb on the community's collection day, once the Coastal Waste & Recycling truck has emptied the carts, and residents do not need to be home.

1. 01Priced per cart, billed to the association. One agreement and one invoice, instead of chasing owners.
2. 02Done in one visit. Homes in the same zone share their two garbage days, so a community can be cleaned street by street on one of them.
3. 03Nothing asked of residents. Owners put the cart out as they already do; the carts are as empty as they get when we arrive.
4. 04Nothing drawn from the property. We bring our own heated water. The dirty water goes into a collection tank on our truck or trailer — nothing is left on your property.

Households in a community without a contract can still book their own carts on our household plans, listed on the pricing page.

A Cooper City board should check its governing documents, its cart count, its collection zone and how residents will be told. Those answers set the price and the day.

1. 01Governing documents. Search the declaration and rules for "refuse", "receptacle" and "common expense". Our guide to HOA trash bin rules in Florida covers the usual wording.
2. 02The cart count. Some homes have more than one cart, and the count is what the price is built on.
3. 03The zone. Cooper City collects garbage twice a week in zones; the garbage collection map on the city's solid waste page shows which zone the community is in. Bulk is a separate monthly pickup by Eastern Waste Systems, on its own zone date.
4. 04The note to residents. Tell owners that carts are now cleaned on a schedule, and repeat the city's advice to bag garbage and keep the lid closed. That protects the work between visits.

Community cart cleaning can cover shared trash areas on the same visit. If a Cooper City community also has a dumpster by the clubhouse, a cart corral or a dumpster pad, those are cleaned under our commercial and HOA cleaning service on the same schedule as the carts.

A single-family association works the same way as a townhouse one. The only difference is the walk between curbs. Our Cooper City page covers service for individual homes.