COUNCIL VOTES TO HIKE TRASH PICKUP 60 CENTS

Starting in July, Cape Girardeau residents will have to pay 60 cents more each month for trash pickup. It will be the first increase in the basic refuse fee in three years.

The City Council Monday voted 5-2 to increase the charge after hearing that the refuse collection enterprise fund's projected income will not quite cover its expenses even with the fee increase. Councilmen Melvin Gateley and Richard Eggiman dissented.

The fund will be short because other revenues are dropping, said finance director John Richbourg. As an enterprise fund, the solid-waste fund must meet its expenses from fees. It has no tax subsidy.

Richbourg said the fund lost $50,000 in revenue this fiscal year when CWI Inc. started operating a transfer station and took business that would have gone to the city transfer station. Recycling revenue dropped by $20,000 over last year, and the city took in less money than projected for stickers for trash over the two-container limit, he said.

The city is getting $35 a ton for cardboard that would bring $180 a ton last year, said Steve Cook, environmental services coordinator. Plastic has dropped from $200 a ton to $5, while newsprint went from $180 to just having Jefferson Smurfit haul it away at no charge.

Eggimann asked why the city is increasing the basic fee rather than reducing the number of containers of trash covered in the fee from two to one and increasing revenue from selling stickers for the additional trash.

Eggimann said the council reduced the allowed containers to two "to keep the little old ladies on fixed incomes" from having to pay more.

Richbourg said the change didn't produce the revenue the city expected. "People are stuffing more into the two cans," City Manager Michael Miller said.

Public works director Doug Leslie added, "A large portion of our waste fee is not volume-based."

Even if volume goes down, the same number of garbage collectors have to drive down the same streets and must retain much of the same equipment, Leslie said.

Gateley said that the people of Cape Girardeau have in the last few years passed bond issues for sewers, water and schools, sales tax hikes for transportation and capital projects and recreational fee increases.

"Now we're asking for 5 percent in solid-waste fees," he said. He proposed phasing the 60-cent increase in over two years, 40 cents in one and 20 cents in the other, to make it easier on people.

Mayor Al Spradling III disagreed. "We're not even covering our costs at 5 percent. We'll still be $40,000 shy," the mayor said. Without the full 60 cents "next year, we'll be even further in the hole. You can't continue to compound the deficit."

Gateley asked if there was any place to cut: the leaf program or the debt service payments to general revenue.

Spradling said there is no way to cut the leaf collection without eliminating it. Richbourg said that cutting the payments to general revenue would mean cutting something from another part of the budget.

Gateley said, "All I'm saying is in this world, budgets have been cut back, and we can do it in Cape Girardeau without reducing any service."

Eggimann agreed, "It will always be part of my thinking as a conservative that maybe we can do it for a little bit less."

The increase is just under a 5 percent rise. Under the city charter the city cannot raise a fee more than 5 percent without submitting it to a popular vote.

In other business, the council asked Fire Chief Dan White to report on the changes in the way the city will figure vacation pay for firefighters. The city will no longer figure overtime pay when calculating vacation pay. Firefighters contend that will cut into the raises city officials promised them.