Duane Hicks
FORT FRANCES—With the Operations and Facilities division facing a cash crunch along with the rest of the town departments, the price of bag tags and tipping fees likely will be among the user fees to go up in the 2009 budget.
Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown informed councillors Wednesday that the 2009 operating budget for waste management is facing a $63,968 shortfall if no user fees are increased.
One new consideration into the waste management budget in 2009 is a new $30 tipping fee the town has to pay Metro Waste whenever it delivers recyclables from here to its facility in Winnipeg.
The new fee is a result of the “huge nosedive” in the commodity price of recyclables.
Since the town delivers about 400 tonnes of recyclables to the Metro facility each year, there now is an additional $12,000 expenditure added to the 2009 operating budget for waste management.
Brown pointed out there would be no shortfall at all if council did away with the free bag of garbage each residence gets, as simply requiring each residence to use just one bag tag a week would generate $257,000 in revenue for waste management each year (and $300,000 if council raised the price of bag tags to $1.75 from the current $1.50).
Councillors took a vote and five out of seven of them agreed to increase the cost of bag tags from $1.50 to $1.75 (16.76 percent), with Couns. John Albanese and Ken Perry speaking against the hike.
Coun. Perry recalled he presented council with a petition in 2006 signed by 1,300 residents who felt garbage pickup should be included in their taxes and not a user fee ( i.e., bag tags), and he felt many residents still feel the same way.
In a separate vote Wednesday, the mayor and council unanimously concurred that residents should continue to get one free container of garbage each weekly pick-up as they have since bag tags first were implemented.
They also agreed to a 12 percent hike to tipping fees at the landfill.
This will affect the rate per tonne (which will rise from $53.57 to $60), as well as other rates (such as the cost of disposing tires and refrigerators) and the flat rates for various vehicles (such as half-tons, mid-size trucks, and full-size vans, singe-axle trucks, tandem trucks, and garbage trucks) when the weigh scale is not in operation.
The 12 percent increase does not, however, affect the charge for passenger vehicles, mini-vans, and SUVs when the weigh scale is not in operation, nor the minimum charge for when it is in operation—both of which will remain at $15.
Also Wednesday, Brown informed councillors the 2009 water works budget is looking at a shortfall of $1,008,901. And while water rates likely will go up in 2009, it’s not clear yet by how much.
Brown noted rates in Dryden are going up 10 percent while Thunder Bay is increasing it by seven percent for a second-straight year.
He added that when setting rates, council has to consider the town’s water system is mandated by the province to be self-funded by 2010.
While a three percent figure was mentioned once or twice during talks Wednesday, no rate increases for water and sewer have been determined yet.
But the mayor and council did agree to take two projects off the table for the 2009 budget—a new paint job for the water treatment plant (which would cost $90,000) and water and sewer work at Butler Avenue ($204,000)—to keep down capital costs in the water budget.
This lowers the aforementioned shortfall to about $714,000.
Mayor and council also asked Brown look into developing new water rates for the industrial class.
While this wouldn’t necessarily be applied in 2009, several councillors agreed it would be helpful to prepare in anticipation of when, or if, water meters are implemented here.
