Jackman-Atkinson: Too much, too soon

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Published on Wednesday, March 13, 2013

By: Kate Jackman-Atkinson

myWestman.ca

Last week, after listening to two hours of public comments that were almost universally in opposition, Neepawa council defeated their proposed new garbage bylaw.

The bylaw aimed to correct an ongoing deficit incurred in the collection and disposal of garbage and recycling, which grew to about $167,000 in 2012.  Over the last 10 years, the Town has spent about $815,000 from general revenue to cover these losses. 

Waste and recycling from the town is collected by a contractor and hauled to Evergreen Environmental Technologies, a regional landfill serving eight municipalities. The Town is billed by both the contractor and Evergreen by the tonne.  The Town isn’t charged by Evergreen for recycling (although they pay a percentage of the transportation costs to get the recycling to Winnipeg). The Town also receives a provincial grant based on the tonnage of recyclables taken to Evergreen.

Today’s problems stem from the current bylaw, which was created in 2006 and was intended to last for 10 years.  The problem is that the old bylaw only takes into account the number of times waste is picked up per week -- not how much that waste weighs. Additionally, it included no provision for increasing rates over the bylaw’s 10 year life-span, not even by the rate of inflation. This means that the most a business can pay for garbage collection under the current bylaw is $650 per year. With the proposed new bylaw having been defeated, the Town is still working under this old bylaw. 

The proposed bylaw would have meant minor changes to residential properties but it also would have meant big changes for those businesses generating more waste.  Those businesses would have seen their annual garbage collection rates increase to $3,000 or $6,000 per year -- a dramatic increase from the $650 or less these businesses are paying under the old by law.

It’s obvious that the rates for waste collection need to be updated. The businesses that are producing a lot of waste are paying too little and they know that. The problem with the proposed bylaw was that it asked too much in too short a time period.  After having no rate increases since 2006, it’s no surprise that many businesses were shocked to see that their proposed rates were 10 times higher than what they were currently paying. 

The rate increases under a new bylaw  could have been spread across more users; everyone could have seen their rates go up a little bit, making the increases at the top smaller, but I don’t think that would have been the right way to do it. I think most would agree that people should pay based on how much waste they are generating -- especially when our ultimate goal is to decrease the amount of garbage going to our landfills. Garbage disposal is much like water. We have a certain amount of control over how much we use the service and therefore, should be charged based on usage. 

Beyond the time frame of the rate changes, the bylaw also faced opposition from businesses who felt they were being forced to pay too much, more than their share.  Proposed rates were set based on the type of business and how much waste had been picked up historically from that location. With such a large rate increase, businesses could accept paying their share, but not a penny more. 

Understandably, council wanted to stem the tide of losses and that’s what we want them to do -- the service should be self-supporting. The problem is that the amounts, combined with the short timeline, were too big a concern for business owners.

It’s clear that the biggest producers of waste will end up paying their way and some of them will likely end up paying as much as $6,000 a year for garbage collection, because that’s the cost of providing them with the service. 

We’ve had our warning and we know that a version of this bylaw will come back again in time for the 2014 tax year.  In the meantime, businesses and residents have been warned and can adjust and prepare. They can look at ways of decreasing waste or increasing recycling and they can budget for higher costs if they are unable to reduce the amount of waste they are sending to the landfill.