Bargain hunting at local garage sales might get a little easier in 2023.

At the council committee on July 18, the council. Mason Ainsworth introduced a motion of inquiry to explore the idea of ​​holding a city-wide garage sale, where residents could enter their addresses on the city’s website and let people know what types of items they put up for sale.

Ainsworth said the idea came from discussions with residents at a recent West Ridge community yard sale, which more than 20 households attended.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could see where all the garage sales were one day in the whole city?” said Ainsworth. “You could also go a bit further with things (like a) citizen portal in the future, and you could say, ‘I’m specifically looking for baby clothes, plants, or tools’…and you could filter those results .so you can save time.

Giving residents the ability to search for specific items would also reduce the litter left over from garage sales, Ainsworth said.

“It will also help reduce the amount of trash produced in our city because instead of people throwing away their things at the end of a garage sale, hopefully more people will come out and use them,” he said. -he declares.

The Board supported the idea and asked staff to prepare a report outlining its feasibility, logistics and costs for consideration during the 2023 budget deliberations.

City staff indicated that they do not currently have the technology necessary for such a program.

“Currently, the IT department (staff) has informed us that we do not have this technology available. However, it’s definitely something we could look into,” communications manager Melissa Gowanlock said. “Some of the other considerations that we will definitely need to look at would be: is providing citizens with a way to post items for sale or register a garage sale a typical municipal service? And our current resources too.

Com. Jay Fallis wondered if the event could also serve as a vehicle for charity.

While attending university in Ottawa, Fallis discovered that a nearby neighborhood would donate proceeds from community garage sales to charity.

“I know with Ottawa, I think what they do is they recommend that 10% of a vendor’s sales go to the food bank or something,” he said. declared. “I don’t know if that’s something we can consider.”

Ainsworth said he was open to the idea, but the main priority of his motion was to look into the possibility of creating the citywide garage sale directory and not to raise money to citizens.

“The intent of this particular motion is not to seek to collect money from anyone,” he said. “But I think your idea is very valid, and I think it could be interesting, depending on how it goes in the future, you could add something to it that says … if someone wanted to have their garage sale with the benefits going to a certain cause, that might be something they could add.

In a discussion with city staff, Ainsworth said concerns have been raised about residents being able to post explicit items for sale, but the intent is to only allow options to a pre-populated list of categories.

“People didn’t want people posting explicit products on the city’s website,” he said. “The intention was just to have a registry in terms of people’s address and then have a pre-populated area for people to select baby clothes, or plants, or whatever they want to have there, so there’s no real way to enter information other than their address and there wouldn’t be anything potentially obscene.