Rubbish Pickup in Cities

[UPPlanner]

Our City is comprised of roughly 16,000 people, currently citizens must purchase "tags" from the Rubbish hauler, they run $14 for 10 or $28 for 20, the City constantly complains about the low take rate on the tags and the fact that only 60% of all households put garbage at the curb, couple that with a rat problem and an ever increasing blight problem, so the City is looking for a way to improve this service. I suggest a millage, I am not in favor of more taxes, but when I did the math it costs about the same either way, but with a millage I can put out more rubbish for the same price (excluding large appliances, etc.).

If your city operates via this type of system, I'd love to hear about your community (size, # of mills, success/failure of the program). Thanks in advance.

 

[michaelskis]

Our city is messed up. We do not have a normal carrier who gets everyone. Property owners fend for them selves, so there are allot of low income people who just dump there trash some place.

 

[Cardinal]

Ours is a mixed approach. Homes and multi-family dwellings up to four units are included in a city-wide contract for weekly garbage pick-up. This contract is included in the city's general fund budget within the public works department. Larger multi-family units and commercial properties are required to contract their own garbage disposal. In effect, since they pay property taxes but don't get the service, they subsidize residential pick-up.

Our biggest problem is with people who put garbage out too early or do not take in their bins. If garbage is put out earlier than the day before collection, the city will contact the hauler to make a special collection, and then bill the property owner for that extra trip. If the bins have not been taken in the day after collection, the city will take them in and bill the property owner $25. These charges get placed on the property tax bill, so they do get paid. Most of the offenders are college students, and they tend not to repeat the mistake.

Oh, we are a comparably-sized community.

 

[Zoning Goddess]

Our garbage fees are handled thru the County's MSBU office and included yearly on our property taxes. They give you one chance a year to change your type of service (# of pickups a week, yard waste or no yard waste, etc.), which sucks.

 

[Chet]

We are "blessed" with a regional landfill, and the siting contract provides very cheap service, plus a % of tipping fees. We net out okay, but at a quality of life price.

 

[Rem]

I suggest a millage .... (size, # of mills, success/failure of the program). Thanks in advance.

Can you explain what a millage is please?

In our city (and this is the Australian norm) we charge an annual flat fee ($174.90 Aud) for which you receive a fortnightly recycling pick up and a weekly general municipal waste pick up. The recyclables go to a MRF and the GMW to a landfill we operate. An extra GMW bin will be picked up at a charge of $3.50 a week.

We are working towards a regional GMW service that would reduce landfill by a process to sort (remove recyclables not sorted by users), composting out purescibles to create a saleable product, capture of gas for electricity generation and landfilling non-purtescible residuals. Our charges will increase with the new service - it is being undertaken for the environmental benefits.

Doing this on a regional cooperation basis is proving difficult (if we had gone on our own the service would be operating by now, instead we are about two years from operation - best case).

We have no real problem with non-presentation or rats etc.

 

[mike gurnee]

real property taxes in the states are called Millage. Now, what is:

a fortnight
MRF
GMW

 

[Rem]

real property taxes in the states are called Millage. Now, what is:
a fortnight
MRF
GMW

Sorry about that. A fortnight is two weeks. MRF - materials recovery facility - it is common usage in the waste industry. GMW - general municipal waste.

We would call millage "rates". I guess you would call our annual fee a millage because even though it represents a fee for service, you have to pay.

I should have mentioned previously that your annual fee also gives you a twice year bulky waste collection (kerbside). You may leave a pile of green, furniture, whitegoods etc waste on the footpath (sidewalk). Anything that won't fit in your standard bin. This is then removed in stages to seperate metals (recycler), green waste (mulcher then worm farm) and remainder (scavenger then landfill).

 

[Cardinal]

Millage is derived from mils - thousandths of a percent. The mil rate is the tax rate levied against a property.

 

[kms]

Our borough bills quarterly, offering a discount for those who pay annually. Population here is about 4500. Before we moved here 6 years ago, borough employees picked up trash in a brough-owned garbage truck. Now, they contract with a private hauler.

 

[JNL]

A fortnight is two weeks.

I didn't realise "fortnight" was only a local term, thought it was universal. We also call our sidewalks, footpaths.

We seem to have a pretty good system for rubbish collection, you can check it out here

The collection cost is built into the purchase cost of the official rubbish bags. But there are also many privately-owned "wheelibin" (large plastic rubbish bin on wheels) operators who will collect your rubbish for a monthly fee.

I didn't realise we have free backdoor rubbish collection if you are unable to carry rubbish bags to the kerbside and you are on a low income, benefit or pension.

 

[Rem]

I didn't realise "fortnight" was only a local term, thought it was universal.

JNL - you don't suppose it is a universal term and we have been suckered here do you? I was surprised as well.

 

[biscuit]

I didn't realise "fortnight" was only a local term, thought it was universal. We also call our sidewalks, footpaths.

As far as I know fortnight is a universal (english speaking world) term as well. It's these mid-westerners hanging around here...Can't teach 'em anything

Expense for rubbish pick-up and recycling in my city are included in the property tax bill, and since I don't yet own a home, I don't know the exact millage. One thing we don't have is a problem with people leaving bins on the curb. That's because the city doesn't require you to use bins. Most people simply place their garbage bags on the curb or down the allyway the morning of pick-up. The same goes for recycling which you only have to place in a blue bag like you get at the grocery store.

 

[donk]

On the garbage issue,

ours is collected weekly, in manner similar to that described by Michael (residential vs commercial). The exception is construction debris that is the responsibility of the home owner. The garbage collector does pick up white goods for no charge.

if we went with a fee for service there would be trash everywhere, the piles of shingles and wood in the woods would be supplemented with household waste.

It seems unfair to me to have a flat rate per house, I only put out 1 bag per week and could get away with a bag every 2 weeks if I had to, yet i pay the same as the household across the street from me that regularily puts out 5-6 bags per week.

There is no recycling or composting in our community.

while I knew a fortnight is 2 weeks it is not in common usage here.

 

[Chet]

I didn't realise "fortnight" was only a local term, thought it was universal. We also call our sidewalks, footpaths.

Yeah and "Krikey" wasn't universal before the Croc Hunter guy!

We call them footpaths or sidepaths too becasue out here in the suburbs sidewalks are evil things that bring "those people"

 

[Cardinal]

It seems unfair to me to have a flat rate per house, I only put out 1 bag per week and could get away with a bag every 2 weeks if I had to, yet i pay the same as the household across the street from me that regularily puts out 5-6 bags per week.

Yeah, I have not put out garbage for two weeks in a row. I still don't have a full bin, either of waste or recycling, so why bother lugging it to the end of the drive and back?

 

[Rem]

It seems unfair to me to have a flat rate per house, I only put out 1 bag per week and could get away with a bag every 2 weeks if I had to, yet i pay the same as the household across the street from me that regularily puts out 5-6 bags per week.

So I guess you would think it really unfair that we charge for availability of service on vacant blocks of land then? It is a pretty unpopular and controversial charge over here but remains common because it is cheaper to administer.

There is a limit to the amount of waste you can leave out. We only pick up bins of a specific design (we have single operator garbage trucks that use an hydraulic arm to pick up and empty the bin) and size. I appreciate we are not rewarding waste conscious residents but the relatively efficient (cheap) billing method is a curse of the monopoly.

 

[donk]

Charging for a service that the tax payers have to maintain, despite the current use of the land is totally fair, we do it in our municipality. We also have frontage fees and flat rate fees where metering is not practical.

With garbage though, me paying the same amount as a family of 6 is not really too equitable.