Solid waste budget affected by drop in market
By Kathy McCarty
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — City Council continued discussing the 2012 budget during a workshop at City Hall Wednesday evening. The majority of the conversation focused on ways to address the estimated $400,000 shortfall the city is facing in 2012 — much of which originates with solid waste disposal.
City Manager Jim Bennett told councilors that the “elimination of blue bags is gaining support.”
“If we eliminate the $40,000 expense for blue bags, we would still need (to come up with) $410,447,” said Bennett.
In response to Councilor Mel Hovey’s prior inquiry about what impact raising the cost of the orange pay-as-you-throw bags would have, Bennett said a five-cent increase would generate around $8,640 in new revenue.
“But if we go from $1.45 to $2 per bag, we’ll sell less bags,” Bennett said. “The more you increase, the less likely you’ll recover in sales.”
Bennett discussed residents disposing of garbage at the landfill, either through permits or paying per load, and how that affected revenue as well.
“People taking MSW (municipal solid waste) to the landfill — we could address that. We could prevent residents from doing that and only allow haulers,” said Bennett, adding he was aware of people bringing trash to the landfill rather than use the PAYT program but questioned the logic of doing so, given the high price of gas and the added time it took to do so.
“I’m still amazed people are driving 14 miles to throw away at the landfill. We have somewhere around 800 tons of trash people are doing, despite the cost of gas, wear and tear on vehicles. If we closed that, it would help with the numbers a little bit,” he said.
Bennett indicated increasing the cost to commercial accounts might “give people the incentive to use PAYT.”
“We have few options. One is dealing with MSW. Do you like the idea of shutting off access and forcing people to use PAYT or going to a higher fee?” asked Bennett.
Council Chair Emily Smith said eliminating access was worth considering.
“Initially going away from allowing (access) would work, to force participation (in PAYT),” said Smith, noting this would help landfill employees get away from handling cash as well.
The city manager told councilors recycling is a growing concern, given the crash in the recycle market in recent weeks. Bennett said the city is moving forward with the bid process to see if they can find anyone who might be interested in privatizing the service, which would reduce the solid waste budget for that aspect of garbage disposal.
“One issue we haven’t dealt with in the budget — we have to face reality; the recycling market has crashed. All the assumptions made eight to 10 weeks ago — that market’s not there any more. That’s part of the puzzle,” he said.
Bennett and Dana Fowler, director of public services, met with personnel from participating towns to discuss solid waste disposal for the coming year, including keeping curbside service for the residents of Presque Isle but eliminating it for surrounding communities. It will now be up to those communities to determine whether to continue curbside pickup, which could possibly require raising taxes, or assigning the responsibility for paying for pickup to the residents and businesses in the respective towns.
The city manager indicated Presque Isle had picked up the curbside service tab for the first year but that will most likely change come 2012.
“They could send us a thank you for handling the first year,” quipped Bennett, noting outside towns are on their own from here.
Finding over $400,000 to balance the budget will be a difficult task and may require a slight tax increase, said Bennett.
“What this tells me, depending on what the number is we have to come up with for increasing the taxes to cover solid waste — the bigger that number, the more aggressive we need to be with alternatives,” said Councilor Hovey.
“One thing some had hoped for was to make some cuts on alternatives and put the money back into capital, so we could maintain our facilities. But it looks like whatever we cut out of here would go to solid waste,” continued Hovey.
Bennett suggested councilors go over the suggested cuts he presented last month, deleting anything they felt shouldn’t be eliminated. Then in the weeks ahead, councilors could continue to go over the list, either removing more from the list or approving recommendations to help balance the budget.
Councilors reviewed the list, making only a few suggestions of items they’d like removed from consideration. Among the suggestions councilors felt could be thrown out were: number 6, shutting down the Forum; and numbers 7 and 8, which would have changed staffing and services at City Hall to a four-day work week and use of furlough days for certain staff. Bennett suggested taking out number 14, applying one-time revenue from a resignation, and using it as a revenue source for 2012. Number 20, eliminating 25 percent of streetlights, was another item councilors said shouldn’t be considered at this time. Number 22, further reductions in capital reserves by another 10 percent, was also taken off the table.
“I don’t see any alternative, depending on what kind of numbers we’re facing, but to consider most of the things that are left,” said Hovey.
Councilor Bruce Sargent said “I’d like to see something on police and fire. Eliminating four officers would be $200,000.”
Bennett said “the assumption was to have that discussion with the consultants” — a meeting which has been scheduled at City Hall for Monday, Nov. 21, at which time the consultants hired to look for ways to make the fire and police departments more efficient and cost-effective will go over their results with city officials. The meeting is open to the public.
