The people Moose Jaw voters elected to run city council took another poke at taxpayers’ eyes this month.
The issue this time is the new restrictions on the two free landfill collection periods.
Since around 1990, the city has offered residents two weeks of free admittance to the dump with garbage — once in the spring, once in the fall.
Under new regulations approved by our city council, this will be restricted to two days on a weekend in the fall and in the spring, and only grass or tree clippings will be accepted.
When the free collection periods were implemented some 30 years ago, these two periods were a concession to taxpayers offering them something in return for a service the city quit providing.
To save money that council ended, first the spring, then the fall clean-up. In those two-week clean-up periods, city crews picked up anything left by residents — grass, tree branches, tires, furniture, appliances and so on.
The council of the day offered the free haul periods in lieu of the clean-ups, hoping that everyone would have access to a truck or trailer to haul their junk to the landfill.
A considerable amount of complaining occurred as always happens when a longstanding service is removed.
The two free collection periods seem to have worked reasonably all these years.
Now council, at the recommendation of city administration, has severely cut the days for free haul by 86 per cent.
The reason offered up for this drastic change supposes that reducing the free hauls will help save space in the landfill. The landfill is nearing the end of its provincially permitted life.
That supposition is clearly wrong. The material will probably end up in the landfill anyway, just collected by the sanitation trucks, or residents will pay to haul it in.
Or some garbage will end up being dumped in alleys or district ditches.
According to information at council, two current weeks of free hauling saw 9,000 visits to the landfill,
In four days, the city might manage to have 2,000 visits. That leaves 7,000 loads of garbage not hauled in.
Likely council and administration are hoping the 7,000 loads will pay $10 to dump in the landfill — providing the city with $70,000 revenues.
The $70,000 would amount to a 1.3 per cent increase to the landfill’s $5.2 million take from taxpayers in garbage collection fees, recycling fees and landfill admission fees.
This council regulation sure sounds like an crude tax grab by the city – a tax grab most likely to backfire as residents leave garbage in lanes or leave material for costly city pick-up.
What makes even less sense is the short notice to residents of the free haul termination just weeks before the spring free haul is to happen.
It seems our dear council has assumed the position of a hard-hearted bureaucrat — let them complain, they’ll get used to it.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Moose Jaw Today, the Moose Jaw Express, its management, or its subsidiaries.
