CITY RETHINKS VOLUME-BASED TRASH BILLING

Cape Girardeau residents might have to buy trash stickers under a volume-based billing system, Assistant City Manager Doug Leslie said.

"You can buy stickers that are placed on (trash) bags and that presently, it seems to us, may be one of the simplest approaches," he said.

"A volume-based program would necessitate a base monthly fee to cover the costs of operation such as fuel, labor, truck maintenance, insurance, recycling and other solid waste services," Leslie and City Manager J. Ronald Fischer said in an agenda letter to the city council.

"This fee could include one container of refuse, then extra refuse would be placed at the curb in a bag or can displaying a sticker purchased from the city at an additional cost," they noted. "This cost per sticker will be dependent on the base fee charge."

The city council is scheduled to discuss trash fees once again when it meets tonight.

At its Dec. 20 meeting, the council asked the city staff to study the possibility of volume-based trash billing.

In doing so, the council for the second time in a month refused to vote on a proposed $1.46 per month trash-fee hike.

Leslie had argued for the fee hike, claiming the city has little control over increased costs resulting from government mandates related to trash disposal.

But council members said they wanted to study alternatives to the across-the-board trash hike, such as volume-based billing.

With volume-based billing, a person or household would be charged on the basis of how much trash they put out for pickup.

The city's Solid Waste Task Force is scheduled to meet Tuesday to review information on volume-based programs in other cities and discuss possible options for Cape Girardeau.

Leslie said late last week that he expects the task force to report back to the council by Jan. 19.

"We are still assembling some additional information," he said.

"We will calculate kind of a series of alternatives: If the base fee is this, this is what the bag fee would have to be to meet the cost of operations," said Leslie.

Volume-based billing can be done in many ways. Leslie said some cities sell trash bags, with the charge per bag covering the cost of trash collection. Others sell stickers that the customer places on trash bags.

"Seattle puts scales on each of their trucks and weighs the waste as they pick it up, and then a computer prints out a bill," he noted. "That is an experimental program that takes volume pricing to the fullest extent."

Leslie said many of the costs associated with trash collection are the same, regardless of the volume of trash handled.

"The actual volume of waste has a fairly small impact on the overall fee structure, versus other items in there," said Leslie. Those other items include everything from labor to truck maintenance.

"The lower the base fee, the higher the cost per bag is going to have to be," he explained. "You do have to make sure that all the on-going costs are covered."

Leslie said that volume-based billing is more difficult from a budget standpoint because it's difficult to project usage.

But he said such a system encourages recycling and waste reduction.

"This volume-based pricing thing is something that I think everybody has been interested in," said Leslie, who pointed out that the task force looked at the issue last year.

"It just requires some careful examination because of the difficulty of predicting what your revenue would be and what would be the usage of it," Leslie said.