AULANDER – Joseph Harris says he just wants his trash picked up.

Harris resides in Blanchard Mobile Home Park on Blanchard Drive, an L-shaped dirt driveway running perpendicular to Aulander’s South Commerce Street.

March 6 was the last day that the town of Aulander made residential garbage pickups on Blanchard Drive because of the condition of the roadway which is lined with pot-holes.

According to Aulander Town Clerk Johnna Brown, residents on Blanchard Drive can bring their trash and set it curbside on Commerce Street and the town will haul it away.

But that’s not good enough for Harris.

“I told them if they weren’t going to pick my trash up then I was going to stop paying my water bill,” Harris said. “We never had this problem out here before.”

Harris claims his water was cut off by the town, but restored later the same day.  Because of the town ordinance, the $15 fee for garbage pick-up in the town of Aulander is bundled into water and sewer bills that residents are required to pay monthly to avoid possible disruption of service.

In the weeks that have followed some of the mobile home park residents have carried their trash to the Bertie County Landfill site; others have left it curbside on Commerce Street, as directed, but there are a few that have garbage piled beside their trailers.

The town insists Blanchard Drive is a private road and the owner should maintain its upkeep.

Aulander mayor Larry Drew says in January the town sent the owner of the mobile home park a letter requesting that the street’s condition be brought up to code, possibly with gravel to fill-in the pot-holes, so that the town garbage truck could pass smoothly in and out of the park without causing further damage to either the vehicle or the roadway.

When no upgrades to the road were made in the 60-plus days since the first letter was sent, the town sent a second letter in March to the owner and another to every mobile home park resident informing them there would be no more pick-ups on Blanchard Drive until the roadway maintenance issue was resolved.

Bill Blanchard, the owner of the mobile home park, says his late mother founded the mobile home park back in the late 1970’s or early 80’s.  It was sometime later that she had the roadway put in.

Blanchard maintains that prior to his mother’s death in 2000 she ‘gifted’ Blanchard Drive to the town of Aulander, though he is not certain of the date because he has no documentation.

“She may have tried to gift it to the town,” says Drew, “but according to our map of all city streets where we have the funds to maintain them it (Blanchard Drive) does not show up as belonging to the town of Aulander.”

Blanchard says that for over 35 years a town public works employee maintained the roadway until that retiring within the last year or so.

Blanchard acknowledged receipt of the letters from the town and said he has made attempts to get in touch with the town to try and resolve the matter.  He further told the News-Herald that he is trying to get a vendor to make upgrades to the roadway; either with a private contractor or a paving company.

“They haven’t picked the trash up out here in two-to-three weeks,” complained Harris. “These pot-holes are so big they’ve messed up the starter on my car.”

Harris feels that if the town can drive back onto Blanchard Drive to read water meters they can come back and haul away the garbage.

He was also told that the meter-readers drive small pick-up trucks.