County Officials Hear New Solid Waste Fee Options

SNOW HILL — Hoping to mitigate some of the deficit generated every year from processing solid waste, the Public Works Department proposed a number of fee options to the Worcester County Commission during a budget work session Tuesday.

These options would let residents chose whether they would prefer to pay for an annual permit or pay for each bag of trash they deposit with the county.

As it stands now, the cost for a household permit to dump solid waste with the county is $60, $25 for a single-vehicle permit and an additional $15 for a second vehicle. In the FY15 proposed budget for Public Works, the cost of a household permit would increase to $100. However, the budget also makes provisions for an alternate “pay-as-you-throw” plan at a suggested cost of $1 per bag. Regulating a pay-by-bag program could have some difficulties, admitted Jessica Ramsay, enterprise fund controller.

“I think there could be challenges to it and that’s why we were going to try to phase it in with doing the option of the $100 or you could go the pay-as-you-throw,” she told the commission. “It could increase the recycling, which is currently right now at 15 percent but that’s going to increase to 20 percent.”

The challenges shouldn’t be excessive enough to derail the program, however, and the system has been proven effective.

“Your staff looked at that. There are programs out there that have successfully used punch cards or bags so they have researched all of that,” said Harold Higgins, chief administrative officer. “Again, they know that is an additional administrative burden on their end to implement those programs and they reviewed that with their advisory committee. It’s an issue to address the lack of revenue that supports the transfer stations so this is a step in that direction.”

The flexibility of multiple fee plans was popular with the commissioners.

“I like the idea that now we’re giving people options and they can sit down and work out their budget and say, ‘what is best for me,’” said Commissioner Judy Boggs.

However, the jump from the current $60 household permit to the proposed $100 caused no small amount of heartburn for some of the commissioners.

Commissioner Jim Purnell was frustrated that the costs continue to rise. But fellow Commissioner Virgil Shockley argued that something has to be done to stem the tide of funds that the solid waste department losses annually.

“You can’t keep losing $700,000 or $500,000 … The problem is that at the end of the day you’ve got a deficit and you’ve got to fix something,” said Shockley.

However, Commission President Bud Church noted that solid waste departments in every county he could think of also operate at a loss and that it’s just the nature of the business. It wouldn’t be as much of an issue for Worcester if Ocean City had not withdrawn their solid waste from the county, said Purnell.

“When Ocean City pulled out, that’s when we started seeing a reduction in the money seen at the landfill. Trying to replace that by putting the burden on the taxpayers in the county is not fair,” he said.

The commissioners will make a final decision on whether to raise the permit fee as well as whether to adopt an alternative pay-as-you-throw program in June when they finalize their budget. If they do increase the permit to $100, Public Works Director John Tustin was doubtful that it would cause a mass exodus.

“At $100 I don’t think you’d lose anybody,” he said, adding that it is still cheaper than hiring a private waste hauler.