You’re going to be paying more for garbage in Owen Sound in a few weeks.
City council approved a motion from Coun. Jon Farmer during a budget meeting on Friday to raise the price of garbage bag tags to $3.50 each — a 40 per cent increase — starting in the new year.
It’s the first bag tag price hike in Owen Sound since 2011. Right now, the cost is $2.50 each.
“This is the kind of area I would want to be as close to revenue-neutral as possible as a philosophy, because the amount people are paying is directly related to the personal choices that they’re making,” Farmer says.
A report from Owen Sound’s Supervisor of Environmental Services Heidi Jennen says the city’s anticipating spending about $685,000 for waste collection in 2024. That’s $400,000 for the contracted curbside service, and about $285,000 in tipping fees.
Staff had recommended the bag tag price be raised to $3.25, which would have resulted in about an $106,000 deficit for waste collection.
Council opted to go with $3.50 per bag tag in a 5-3 recorded vote. Mayor Ian Boddy, and councillors Brock Hamley, Travis Dodd and Suneet Kukreja supported Farmer’s motion. Councillors Carol Merton, Marion Koepke and Melanie Middlebro’ opposed it.
The price increase will make the cost for Owen Sound residents to have their garbage picked up among the highest in the area, according to Jennen’s report.
It only identifies Meaford with a higher cost per bag tag ($4). Some other municipalities like Chatsworth and The Blue Mountains offer the first bag of curbside garbage pickup free, and then require a tag for additional trash.
Jennen’s report predicts the city will bring in about $682,000 in bag tag revenue next year at the new $3.50 fee. The city requires each bag of garbage collected through curbside pick-up to have a tag placed on it.
Koepke called garbage collection a municipal service and says she believes it should be funded through the tax-base.
“I have never been in favour of an increase in the bag tags as another revenue source or user-fee source,” Koepke says.
Merton floated the idea of setting aside about $100,000 from $350,000 in cost savings the city realized through provincial changes to the bluebox program, in order to prevent the price of a bag tag going up.
The city is planning to put the $350,000 aside to help with startup costs for a potential, future green bin program — a service that currently doesn’t exist in Owen Sound and could cost as much as $1.8-million annually, according to a waste management review report a consultant prepared for the city earlier this year. That’s nearly triple what the city currently spends on curbside garbage collection annually.
Merton hoped some of that money could help offset the planned increase in the price of a bag tag.
“We know people are struggling. We know what the average household income is. We understand that there is a certainly an economic pinch,” Merton explains.
Farmer addressed Merton’s comments later in meeting: “If we’re worried about what people can afford, I think we need to question whether the people who are struggling to make ends meet are the people who are throwing out a lot of stuff, or who are letting food go bad to be tossed out in the first place. I would argue they’re not, and the people we are actually subsidizing are the folks who can afford to create the most waste.”
Middlebro’, who voted against the bag tag hike, brought up the issue of downtown waste collection. She spoke about a June report that found only about 25 per cent of the garbage bags picked up during a collection run in the River District actually had tags on them. In short: most people and businesses who live and operate in the downtown area aren’t even using bag tags, and their trash is still getting picked up.
“We have to come up with a scenario of what we’re going to do with compliance for the people in the River District to comply with this,” Middlebro’ says. “Otherwise, you’re increasing the rate on the people who are already complying with the system, and they’re being penalized and we’re just turning a blind eye to all these other people.”
A city staff report says the garbage bag tag price increase in Owen Sound would be implemented in early January 2024.
