Assembly decreases landfill fees

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly voted to amend the cost of trash disposal at the Central Landfill and other transfer sites by a 4-3 vote at their June 4 meeting.

Resolution 21-054 proposed by Assemblyman Mokie Tew reduced the rate of garbage per bag at transfer sites. Public Works Director Terry Dolan noted the increase in revenues at the landfill over the past decade to where the landfill currently operates at a near revenue neutral level. However, with amendment’s during the budget process, Dolan estimated that the total revenue loss would be $2.5 million.

“The previous reductions in the rates for the solid waste system amounted to about $600,000, so altogether this will reduce revenue by about $2.5 million out of an eight to nine million dollar program,” said Dolan. “The revenue that remains, our initial analysis is that it’s not sufficient to cover the operating cost softhe system or the capital costs.”

Members of the public traveled from Talkeetna to speak on the issue. Dawn Harris works as an employee for Talkeetna Refuse.

“The legislation to decrease consumer fees at the transfer sites and increase the rates for private businesses that provide door to door service concerns me. Although it’s not unusual to see consumer costs rise over time. I am worried that the cost to dispose of my trash via private service sharply increasing year after year at the central landfill, that my service will become unaffordable,” said Harris. “I am reminded of the Talkeetna water and sewer system. The users continue to bear the cost of a system the borough could not afford with businesses especially getting reamed in the checkbook. It has finally become affordable because of a local sales tax.”

Harris quoted the Freedom of Government Competition Act in pointing out the importance of private businesses. Bill Stearns owns Talkeetna Refuse, which he started in 1995.

“We are all private enterprises and when these transfer sites are costing that much money to fund and so on, we are paying the price of it and we have to pass that onto the residents, so we are just appalled, frankly, at why we are funding our own competitor. The transfer sites all lose money. You guys for instance proposed that you lower the price of disposal at the transfer sites. Where’s the money going to come from,” said Stearns. “I’d like to see more discussion about how private enterprise is going to be impacted by these transfer sites. We are closer to all the transfer sites, that Talkeetna Refuse is closer to all these transfer sites than anybody else so who’s impacted the most, we are. We are a local business, we hire locally, were not outside owned and so on and so forth and so we have no choice but to continue to increase our prices which is going to drive our customers to the transfer sites even more and more it’s an ugly spiral that goes no wehere but down.”

Mayor Vern Halter asked Dolan whether he agreed with members of the public that the changes in fees included in Resolution 21-054 could hurt trash hauling companies that provide curbside service. Dolan noted that the rural trash haulers would be most affected.

“The facilities are already really at their maximum capacity in terms of serving the public in terms of the numbers of visits and when you do something like this, you’re encouraging folks to drop their service from the haulers and bring their waste directly to the landfill and you have more and more visits so that’s why I can’t really tell you the real cost of this over time because I can’t really accurately estimate the public behavior once these rates would go into effect,” said Dolan. “Businesses that provide waste services in those areas will still be paying the same rate when they bring their commercial vehicles to our landfill gates and that means we’re creating rates that are anti competitive. We’ll be taking a loss one very transaction we do at the transfer stations and at the central landfill, not the commercial side but the residential side so yeah I think it’s likely companies will lose business and some of them potentially will fail because of this.”

Assemblyman Tew made amendments to the bag fee during the budget process that were adopted and supported the additional amendment to the fees.

“What you did in your new budget ws you wanted to jack it up a dollar and so what I did was I took it down one dollar so it doesn’t sound like a very big deduction and then I made it to where people could bring their pickup load with the garbage level to their bed for $10 they could throw their garbage away,” said Tew. “I think we could do better for the citizens out here and I think that $10 a truck load to get rid of their garbage and two dollars a bag to get rid of their garbage is a good service and I think that’s fair to the people.”

Assemblyman Tim Hale was concerned with how the central landfill would fill the deficit, and was told by Dolan that the money to make up the difference would likely come from the enterprise fund.

“A good portion of my district does not have that service available to them and most of those folks use the transfer sites and this might be a little more than we should be doing but I think it’s a good idea to reduce those rates at the transfer sites for those folks who don’t have access to the haulers,” said Hale.

Dolan said that the majority of visits to the transfer site pay the bag rate for loads under 200 lbs. Currently, the fee for up to 200 lbs is $10, but Tew argued that the prices have varied.

“I think it’s irresponsible of us to be charging less than it actually costs to provide this service so either we can pay this cost ourselves or we can ask our kids to pay it but at some point someone is going to pay so I’m going to oppose this resolution,” said Deputy Mayor Tam Boeve.

Boeve was joined by Assemblywoman Stephanie Nowers and Assemblyman Jesse Sumner in voting against Resolution 21-054 and Hale, Tew, George McKee and Rob Yundt voted in favor.

“It just doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense to me and you know they’re, the service provided by commercial haulers is a pretty convenient one. I don’t know that we necessarily want to strongly discourage that and we do have to be mindful that we can essentially through subsidies, operate as a monopoly. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should in this particular field of transporting garbage to the dump. I’m not certain that we can do it more efficiently.”