Loading...
Holiday Refuse Coll AllowanceMEMORANDUM December 12, 2002 TO:The Honorable Mayor and City Council Members FROM:Michael C. Van Milligen, City Manager SUBJECT:Holiday Refuse Collection Allowance Citizens have discussed with City staff concerns about additional waste created by the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Staff researched potential options to deal with this issue and how other communities address the extra volumes. Operations and Maintenance Manager Don Vogt is recommending that the City offer one free refuse container sticker to assist citizens with this problem. This would be a pilot program that would need to be evaluated each year based on cost, implementation issues and evaluation of its ability to address the problem. Most other communities make no modification to their systems. Public information would be distributed making citizens aware of this opportunity, but the most important part of the public information distributed would be to encourage citizens to recycle as much of their additional materials as possible. I concur with the recommendation and respectfully request Mayor and City Council approval. MCVM/jh Attachment cc: Barry Lindahl, Corporation Counsel Cindy Steinhauser, Assistant City Manager Don Vogt, Operations and Maintenance Manager CITY OF DUBUQUE, IOWA MEMORANDUM December 10, 2002 TO: Michael C. Van Milligen, City Manager FROM: Don Vogt, Operations and Maintenance Manager SUBJECT: Holiday Refuse Collection Allowance The purposes of this memorandum are to provide information and recommend a course of action regarding the extra materials usually collected by City solid waste crews immediately after the Christmas and New Year's holidays. With our recent implementation of the State-mandated Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) refuse collection system, additional costs associated with this annual extra volume are a concern of some of our customers. Attached is a memorandum from Solid Waste Management Supervisor Paul Schultz regarding the topic. Like Paul, I have also been approached by some citizens regarding the disposal of the cardboard boxes, wrapping paper and styrofoam that Christmas gifts are packed/wrapped in. I must admit that Paul's and my original intent was to recommend to you that a one or two week post- Christmas refuse collection amnesty be declared to accommodate the extra materials. I asked Paul to consult with neighboring cities and Allied/BFI regarding their policies. I also asked him to list the positives and negatives of three likely options. After reading Paul's memorandum, I agree with him that the negatives associated with a one or two week general amnesty seem to outweigh the positives. However, I do support the idea of offering our customers something which could address the cost of an extra container and be viewed as a holiday "thank you" for the community-wide support and success of the PAYT program. As a result, I do recommend that one, single-use, extra refuse container sticker be provided free of charge to any walk-in City of Dubuque refuse collection customer at the Utility Billing counter at City Hall through January 17th. Paul and I have discussed this option with Finance Director Ken TeKippe. He feels that it can be accommodated by his staff, with some assistance from one of our restricted-duty workers, and agrees that the walk-in distribution method is the least costly option, other than the no-change option. By having the free sticker available for approximately a full month, customers desiring one should not feel that they have to make a special trip downtown for it. Also, the free sticker option allows for its use after Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's Day, or any other special occasion or holiday in the coming year. I also recommend that we immediately initiate an educational campaign - noting that a lot of the packaging materials are recyclable and/or reusable. I request your direction in this matter. ATTACHMENT CITY OF DUBUQUE, IOWA MEMORANDUM December 10, 2002 TO: FROM: SUBJECT: Donald J. Vogt, Operations and Maintenance Department Manager Paul F. Schultz, Solid Waste Management Supervisor Christmas Holiday Extra Refuse Accomodation The purpose of this memorandum is to suggest three alternatives in response to customer concerns regarding extra refuse generation following Christmas. Six customers have expressed this concern to me over the last two months. It is due to the container setout limits of the Pay As You Throw program. First Alternative: No Program Change: No extra refuse containers to be collected without attached extra garbage single-use stickers. Second Alternative: Advertise One Extra Baq or Can at No Additional Charge: This exception would be allowed for each household or small business customer on their first collection day following Christmas. Third Alternative: Distribute One Extra Garbage Pickup Tag Per Customer At No Charge: This option would be available through customer pickup at the Utility Billing Counter until January 17, 2003. Rationale for the alternatives: First Alternative: No Program Change: Accepting a "free bag" would appear to undermine the basis of PAYT and the importance of recycling and waste minimization as an every day responsibility; · Very few PAY'I' programs make volume exceptions for Holidays: Dubuque BFI/Allied, Cedar Rapids and Ottumwa do not. Madon does allow an extra bag, but does not state it on their website; · A "No Exceptions" policy would avoid the criticism that the City is favodng a Christian religious holiday over other ethnic, cultural traditions; · A good percentage of our customers will not need to set out any extra containers of holiday refuse given their strong recycling of cardboard and other paper; · The PAYT program can use the revenue since aggressive recycling has reduced the sale of single-use extra garbage pickup tags; · None of our current written literature or text on our Extra Garbage Pickup Tags says anything about a holiday exception; · If a "free bag" were allowed this year for the Christmas Holiday, it would be difficult to not allow the same exception in future years. In future years, some customers could stockpile heavier refuse for this free disposal which would reduce sticker revenue, increase overtime and increase heavier lifting risks under winter conditions; · Customers have been stocking-up on single-use stickers for holiday use. Some customers will claim that they did not get any message about free bags following Christmas. Some will demand that they be compensated for having a stickered bag collected when a sticker was not required, or perhaps that we should collect a free bag the next week. This is a no-win situation and will cause a lot of extra phone calls coming into the office and additional paperwork and workload for solid waste staff follow-up; · The implementation of the PAYT program allowed us to lower the solid waste base fee by $1.00 per month. Our analysis has indicated that 75 to 80% of our customers have saved money under PAYT. Our base fee is the lowest of the larger cities in Iowa. Therefore, the cost of disposing of holiday refuse should not be seen as an unfair burden but as a seasonal adjustment compensated by a lower monthly fee; and, · Recycling crews will be instructed to collect unacceptable paper holiday packaging material, and to leave a friendly reminder tag for the future, rather than rejecting the material and leaving it uncollected in the recycling bin. Our recyclables-processing vendor BFI/Allied has approved this accommodation. It will reduce the materials needed to be set out as refuse by our customers. Second Altemative: Advertise One Extra Bag or Can at No Charge: · Much of the packaging generated at Christmas is not recyclable: Styrofoam, foil-component greeting cards and envelopes, miscellaneous plastics, etc; · The extra refuse containers at this time of the year weigh very little, compact well and would only increase our cost of collection by a relatively small amount; · The accommodation could be presented as a holiday present / thank you for our customers' excellent participation in the PAYT program; · Families often feel financially pinched at Christmas and express that they would rather use their available dollars for presents rather than for refuse disposal; · With an extra allowed bag, there would be less refuse left uncollected in alleys; and, · There would be less of an incentive to dump illegally. Third Altemative: Distribute One Extra Garbage Pickup Tag Per Customer At No CharRe. · The accommodation could be presented as a holiday present / thank you for our customers' excellent participation in the PAYT program. This would not imply any future holiday waste accommodation; · The tag would be made available for customer pickup at the Utility Billing counter until January 17, 2003. Requests by phone to mail out the tag would not be accepted; · Customers could use the tag on any of their collection days in the future; and, · Some customers might criticize this alternative as too much of a bother to expect customers to travel to City Hall for the small value of one free $1.05 tag. They may suggest that we mail a sticker to each customer. However, mailing a sticker to every customer would have a much more serious economic impact on both the Solid Waste budget and the Utility Billing budget than a pickup option. Recommendation: Third Altemative: Distribute One garbage Pickup Tag To Each Customer. Pickup at the Utility Billing counter is the only viable option.