The city is cancelling one of its two seasonal cleanup collection services in order to cut costs for waste collection.
Over $5 per household will be saved by the city with cutting the offering of a free fall cleanup service, a significant achievement in the face of increasing costs for the service.
The waste collection bylaw will still provide a spring waste collection service to the residents of Rossland, while absorbing the contractor's increase of $8.25 per dwelling unit per year.
Providing a spring yard and garden waste collection offers the convenience of disposing of yard and garden waste for residents; to reduce the number of trips that residents need to make to the Trail landfill to dispose of their yard and garden waste and thereby decreasing the community’s greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce the instances of illegal dumping of yard and garden waste by residents.
The new bylaw will see an overall reduction to each serviced home from $84.25 to $79.14 per year.
The spring cleanup service has been a much heavier used service than that of the fall cleanup service, manager of public works, Darrin Albo, told council.
But he said some people might be resistant to the cancellation of the fall cleanup.
Breaking down the costs, the city will charge a flat rate service fee of $63.14 per year per dwelling unit to fund solid waste collection and disposal services in Rossland.
In addition to the flat rate service fee, users wishing to utilize curbside pickup service, shall purchase contractor stickers.
The city will charge a flat rate service fee of $16 per year per dwelling to fund the spring yard and garden waste collection and disposal service in Rossland.
If a garbage service account balance remains unpaid on Dec. 31 in any year, the amount will be transferred to the tax account of the property.
Water rates
The city will also be applying to the Columbia Basin water smart match funding grant opportunity to hire a water rate consultant via a request for proposal process.
The consultant will assist the city in developing a long-term water utility rate structure.
The city will be budgeting $5,000 as their portion of the matching funding.