Victoria might have to both raise fees and drop backyard pickup of garbage and kitchen scraps in order to cover unanticipated operating costs.
In a report going to council this week, city staff are recommending raising garbage fees $6 a year and requiring residents to haul cans to the curb to cover increased operating costs of its new garbage/kitchen scraps program.
If backyard pickup was retained, rates would have to be increased $20 per household to cover additional staffing costs, the report says.
“I’m very disappointed to receive this report,” Mayor Dean Fortin said.
“Clearly, we were looking for ways to provide a good-quality service to our residents — introduce the green bins but also give them an opportunity to reduce their costs. That’s not happening and I’m very disappointed.”
Others agreed.
“What I just can’t stomach ... is how we’re asking people to do more and pay more at the same time,” said Coun. Lisa Helps, adding that it underscores how the city should be doing business differently.
“I think we need to change our approach a little bit to how we do business at the city to say: We’re buying new trucks. Things could go wrong. Let’s build into the budget from the very get-go some kind of operating reserve for unanticipated mechanical failures with these new products. That’s what business people do.”
Victoria bought new trucks and introduced a new residential garbage and kitchen scrap collection system in February — moving from weekly backyard collection of garbage to bi-weekly collection of garbage and kitchen scraps.
Under the new system, homeowners have been supplied with special wheeled totes — one for garbage and one for kitchen scraps — that are collected from backyards every two weeks. Once emptied, the totes are left at the curb.
But a combination of factors has led to increased operational costs of about $225,000, city staff say. Those include: mechanical difficulties with the new trucks, more requests than anticipated for different bin sizes, teething problems with the new collection system, a slower pickup cycle time and loss of revenue as 364 users have switched to private collection.
Additional staff time was budgeted to help take calls and to assist with the collection on the routes at the program’s launch, the report says.
“What was not anticipated was the amount of mechanical difficulties that would arise with the new fleet of trucks and therefore the amount of overtime it would take to complete each route every day,” it says.
“It took four months to make the trucks reliable enough to stay on the routes each day. However, even once the trucks were reliable, the slower cycle time of the trucks, combined with the actual time each route takes to collect, has required an additional staff person on each of the three routes just to complete collection in the workday and avoid ongoing overtime.”
Coun. Shellie Gudgeon said most people would be willing to pay to continue to have backyard pickup.
“As a resident, I would rather pay the $20 and have them take it from the rear of my house. And that is what I’ve heard resoundingly from the residents via email before I voted [for backyard pickup],” Gudgeon said.
A $6 increase per user would mean an annual rate of $174 for the 80-litre bin user, $189 for the 120-litre bin user and $210 for the 180-litre bin user.
In a survey conducted prior to making the decision to retain backyard pickup, 48 per cent of respondents chose the lower-cost option of curbside pickup every two weeks compared with 35 per cent who favoured backyard pickup every two weeks, with the totes left at the curb.
Council and residents were lobbied hard by CUPE Local 50 to retain backyard service.
