The City of Toronto and its two unions spent Saturday in intense negotiations to end a 35-day civic strike but one local councillor said he's not waiting for the strike to end to clean up the mess it's leaving behind.

Coun. Georgio Mammoliti and a business association in his ward have teamed up to provide local residents with a private garbage dump site for them to throw out their garbage.

The strike has stopped a slew of city services including garbage pick-up, forcing residents to haul their trash to a number of dump sites set up by the city.

Often times, residents have had to wait in line for hours to drop off their garbage and were told they were only allowed to dump three bags.

Mammoliti said Saturday that at the private site, residents will not be inconvenienced.

"We'll make sure of that. The security guards that are present will make sure of that," he told reporters at a news conference. "There are laws. The security guards that (the Emery village BIA) has hired have the right to arrest. So bring it on if that's what you want.

"This community has had enough and we'll clean it up ourselves if we have to," he added.

The private dump is located at Finch Avenue and Weston Road. It is the latest initiative taken by Mammoliti and his community to clean up the ward.

Last week, several community volunteers got together to collect garbage, maintain local parks and tidy up roadways.

Mammoliti, who was once the head of the union representing public housing workers, upset picketers by his actions but the councillor said he has had enough of the job action.

In the meantime, talks between the city and its inside and outside workers are progressing well, according to Mark Ferguson, president of Local 416.

Ferguson told city management on Friday that if a deal wasn't reached by midnight Sunday, union representatives would walk away from the bargaining table and would join the picket lines.

There had been progress to the point where we felt it was time to place a deadline on talks and time to send a message to the city that it was about time they got serious on bargaining," he told CTV Toronto from outside the negotiation room on Saturday.

Ferguson said all sides are working hard towards reaching an agreement before Sunday's deadline.

"Certainly we have been negotiating quite consistently since yesterday when we made the announcement," he said.

Local 79, the union representing inside workers, did not impose a deadline but a representative said their members also hope a deal is reached by the end of the weekend.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Austin Delaney