4.8. SR 11-18-2002 - Laserfiche WebLink

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GARBAGE COLLECTION PROGRAM This budget includes expenditures for service contracts with haulers for the collection of the city's garbage and recycling material, payment for disposal of waste at the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) plant, and for the overall administration of the program, including coordination with the Elk River Municipal Utilities for customer billing. 2003 BUDGET COMPARED WITH 2002 BUDGET The city began the organized residential garbage collection and recycling program in November 1990. The garbage collection and recycling program deals only with residential properties of four units or less. The Elk River Municipal Utilities collects the garbage customer fees for the city. The city makes payments to the garbage collection firms for services and to the RDF plant for disposal. The city is in the middle of a five year contract with Randy's Sanitation and BFI for garbage collection and recycling services. This contract ends in October 2004. The city has entered into a long-term contract with the county for the disposal of garbage at the RDF plant. This contract established disposal fees at $45.00 per ton through April 2008. Currently, the city has approximately 5,025 customers. The customer breakdown of the program by type of container shows: 3,517 ninety-gallon containers, 452 sixty-gallon containers, 654 thirty-two gallon containers, and 301 thirty-two gallon (picked up bi-weekly) containers. Additionally, 100 customers have two 90-gallon containers that are picked up weekly. Recycling material is picked up weekly except for the households that have bi-weekly garbage service. Over the past few years the city has used its garbage collection funds reserves to balance the operating budget. Due to a number of unforeseen situations, such as a sales tax rebate and a county funding program for recycling, the city garbage collection fund balance became larger than necessary. The goal is to keep about $70,000 in reserves for cash flow purposes. This goal will be achieved by about mid-year 2003 by using $35,800 of reserves to help balance the 2003 operating budget. Use of the reserves has also kept the garbage collection rates low. In order to balance the 2003 budget and have the garbage collection program operate on a "breakeven" basis, a rate increase is being proposed effective July 1, 2003. The rate increase being recommended is one dollar per month per service container. City Council approval is required for the rate increase to go into effect. The 2003 garbage collection and recycling program budget is proposed in the amount of $839,700. This is an $18,950 or 2.3 percent increase over the adopted 2002 budget. The garbage hauler payment and the waste disposal fees amount to 96 % of the total budget. This percentage is consistent with previous years. Other expenditures to note include the $25,500 payment to the Elk River Municipal Utilities for billing and collection services and the $3,750 for city staff time that is necessary to manage this program.