2021-10-27 EMC minutes draft - Laserfiche WebLink

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through Real Property Tax revenue. We have some revenue coming in on tipping fees, but that’s only on commercial entities. Recycling gets a piddle. Even though there is a CIP list of more than $1 billion of projects that need to be done, that money doesn’t happen automatically. It needs to be funded and is subject to the political winds of the time. So where we are leaning was to think not only of wastewater as an enterprise fund, but also solid waste management, which is basically treating this as a business with fees for service to manage our solid waste, with the preferable goal of keeping it out of the landfill, and certainly out of our land and water if we can. We all recall what an enterprise fund is. What she wrote in her paper are the different ways that an enterprise fund would look at how do we get more money. She added that the amount of money that is necessary for solid waste is peanuts next to what we need to manage wastewater, but nevertheless it is important to the community and to our ‘ina. Tipping fees. Wehave been upping the amountfor tippingfees at the landfill 2 percent a year, 4 and another range of increases is going to have to come and be approvedby Counciland hopefully we will hear some discussion about the residential hauler credit that was previously removed–i.e., if you were acommercial haulerand you were taking residential waste, you didn’t have to pay a tipping fee. That got reversed, squawks were made, and now DEM is looking at reinstating that credit. But it’s a chunk of change that could be brought to bear to costs. Another thing is looking at increased fees for special waste, not the humdrum stuff but the things that need special handling and special concentration and control,or to penalize people who are dumpinginto the landfill things that could be recycled. A point that Ramzi made at the Council meetings he has been at recently is that the tipping fees were not built to increase with inflation. And so we could make sure that that gets worked in. Pay As You Throw was brought up in the Solid Waste Advisory Committee and was not selected as a high prioritybut was in there as a recommendation to look at. And if people are interested, she could provide more information to that. Basically, it’s incenting people to reduce the amount of waste they are putting in the landfill, and increasing their recyclables, because there is a real price differential. It’s going to cost you more if you are just throwing it away as trash, as opposed to recycling it. Better yet, you don’t make it in the first place. It has some initial challenges to make sure there is good communication and enforcement about putting the right things in the right bags or containers. It would involve ideally having some curbside pickup available. So, there are things to do to make sure that we can incent people to do the right thing, reducing waste, through a PAYT program. It has been successful in other areas, including other rural areas. We are paying right now through Real Property Tax. It is a percent, it’s hidden, nobody really thinks about itor recognizes that you have to pay for solid waste. One recommendation from ISWMPwas to drawitout as a line item what we are payingfor waste, and unfortunately increase that line item. 4 Ordinance No. 2020-86 removed the Council’s role in raising the tipping fees and placed the fee schedule in the administrative rules. This ordinance added HCC Section 20-04-04: “Fees for management of materials entering into a SWD facility and any State solid waste surcharge shall be established by the department pursuant to department rules.” 5