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Solid-waste board OKs rate hikeA city-county board charged with running the Skagit County solid-waste system voted 5 to 1 Wednesday to raise the fee charged at the transfer station to cities, commercial garbage haulers and individuals.
The rate increase is $6 per ton, or 7 percent. People bringing in small loads will see…
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Three questions: #1. I wonder what Brett Sandstrom - Dennis London’s challenger - thinks of this? #2. Why not just pass on the rate increase to users directly? Hmmm… #3. What is it going to take for a functional solid waste system? |
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Skagitonian 1982… Can’t comment on your first question. The rate increase will be passed on directly to those who self-haul to the incinerator site or outlying transfer stations. The county charges the cities for the tonnage they collect and deliver. The cities then pass those charges along to individual ratepayers as part of the curbside collection rates they charge. When you spread $6 per ton over the customer base, the actual increase per customer really shouldn’t be very noticeable. I doubt the average residential customer puts out much more than a ton of garbage in a year. As for question 3, the present systems functions. It just doesn’t function that well and won’t be up to the demands as the county’s population keeps growing. The interesting part is that a dozen or so years ago, the county was charging us $102 per ton. A few of us waged war and the rate was dropped to where it’s been since. And even at that reduced rate, the county has spent quite a bit of money at the transfer station and still built a reserve fund of about $3,000,000. |
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Thanks retnfo for the info :-). I think the individual rural dumpers are getting hammered here at the expense of urban areas that get a small increase. I’m about to anger some regulars here but I think the solid waste industry ought to rename itself the solid sleaze waste industry. I’ve yet to hear of a solid sleaze waste operator doing everything on the up & up yet. |
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I haven’t read of any increased cost to the county to haul the trash away so it looks like this increase is NOTHING MORE than a local attempt to rip the users off. Vote any turkey that votes for an increase, OUT. ARE YOU listening commissioners??. |
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Isn’t Skagit County trying to clean the cities up? What do you suppose the cities are going to look like a year from now, when people get tired of paying the high price to get rid of their garbage and waste? How many business dumpsters are going to report Illegal dumping? How many forested roads are going to have piles of garbage hidden in them? How many people are going to start burning their waste again? I bet the commissioners never stopped to ask those questions, while they are buying their fatter wallets to put money in them! |
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