OLDS — Town council is looking at cutting the rates for households that use a second black bin from the current rate of $19.30 a month to somewhere in the $10 range per month (on top of the $70 fee to acquire one).
The issue is expected to come back before the Town of Olds council for a more “fulsome discussion” during its next policies and priorities meeting on Dec. 7.
During debate, some councillors had suggested cutting that cost to $3 a month, but agreed to look at the $10 a month range after finance director Sheena Linderman said at least $10 a month would be needed to cover at least some of the costs for those bins.
Coun. Wanda Blatz raised the matter during a council meeting earlier this month.
She said she was surprised and concerned to find that the town charged so much for people to have a second black bin emptied.
Blatz also apologized for having not spotted that rate, despite having sat on council for about three years.
“I think that’s a kind of exorbitant amount of money to charge our residents for an additional pickup, she said.
Several other councillors also questioned that rate.
Operations director Scott Chant said the rate was agreed upon by a previous council years ago to spur people to separate more of their waste into blue and green bins, thereby cutting the amount of solid waste going to the landfill.
"It was put in by council of the day and it hasn’t changed since – more of a deterrent I guess, so to speak, (so) if you didn’t want to recycle and don’t want to use compost and you just want to keep throwing it in the black bin, then there’s a cost to that,” he said.
Harper said that was her recollection too.
Councillors Mary Anne Overwater and Heather Ryan agreed with that overall concept but noted these are very tough times for families, several of which asked for a second black bin.
In fact, Overwater noted several families have called for more frequent black bin pickups beyond the current schedule, where they’re picked up every three weeks.
And Ryan said she has long advocated for cutting the number of compost bin pickups in the winter and increasing them in the summer.
"So I would like to have – as councillor Ryan said – a more fulsome discussion at our P and P meeting in December."
Like others, Coun. Debbie Bennett said council needs more background from administrative staff before deciding what to do about black bin pricing.
She made another point too.
"I just would like to remind everyone that every black bin that’s tipped adds stress to our landfill and shortens the life of the actual landfill. So I would encourage people to still compost and to still recycle,” she said.
Blatz and others agreed with that sentiment.
