recycling
At Tuesday night's Board of County Commissioner's meeting, the commissioners will vote to create a multi-jurisdictional, time-restricted Solid Waste Advisory Group (SWAG). This 12-member advisory group will consist of 2 representatives from each of the 4 local governments, 2 from UNC, and 2 citizens, and will be tasked with defining the nature, scope, and timing of solid waste issues including, but not limited to:
Solid Waste Tax District Public Hearing tonight 4/1/14 in Hillsborough.
I attended the public hearing on 3/18. Here are my
observations based upon what others have said.
1.
The main problem is that the county had a good
funding system which has been called into question. Many speakers supported the
fee system and feared that a tax district would cost them more.
2.
People with open land, forest or agricultural
land should be using the Present Use Value Program ( and other conservation
incentives) so their tax valuation should not be high. The majority of people
should pay less in tax than in the old fee since only a relative few have
higher assessed properties.
On
Tuesday evening, the Board of County Commissioners will hold a public
hearing on recycling. There has been a change in the way the law is
being interpreted which makes the current fee system questionable.
Currently the county is divided into 3 sections. Some of the rural
community pays for 2 of the 3R fees (availability and convenience
centers) and the portion of the rural community that gets curbside
collection on recycling pays for those same 2 + an additional fee of $38
for collections. A new funding source is needed for the curbside
collections portion of the fee (a service that effects about 13,000
residents).
The
county is considering 3 options to get around this legal issue. 1) go
to a solid waste authority (like OWASA) that would be a separate
operational and financial unit, 2) create 3 solid waste tax districts,
or 3) eliminate curbside collection for neighborhoods outside of a city
limit.
As Terri Buckner describes in her commentary in yesterday's Chapel Hill News, we could be seeing the end, as we know it, of our very successful recycling program in Orange County.
Some will say that since the county has already privatized recycling
in the urban areas, this proposed expansion to county residents should
not create any concerns. But if all recycling in Orange County is
privatized, the current system is effectually dead, including all the
outreach and education, the goodwill recycling and composting at public
events like Hog Day, the dedicated staff constantly seeking new markets,
and the service to both school systems that has always been handled by
the county. In other words, we'll be left with the same kind of
recycling program that everyone else in the state has.
In 1997 as
part of the state's required plan, we adopted a goal of 61 percent
waste reduction. We're just a smidgeon away from achieving that goal (59
percent). We've accomplished something amazing, something worth
fighting to protect.
I heard reference to http://freecycle.org on the radio yesterday, described as an organization to promote free exchange or donation of unwanted things that ought not to go to the landfill and still possibly useful. There is an Orange County group - is anyone here a member? How does it work?
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