Heavy garbage decision coming Friday
All depends on CBRM surplus at end of current fiscal year
By the end of the week, it should be clear whether there will be heavy garbage pickup in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality this year.
Cape Breton Regional councillors have voted in favour of a motion that would see the reinstatement of a spring heavy garbage pickup if the municipality has a surplus at the end of the current fiscal year, which ends Friday.
“The director of public works was off last week so we’re going to have a sit down just to see where we’re at,” chief financial officer Marie Walsh said Monday. “Hopefully, I’m still confident it will happen.”
The CBRM recently approved an operating budget of almost $149 million and $31 million capital budget but it’s the $250,000 allocation for heavy garbage that has traditionally sparked some of the most vocal public debate. While it’s a relatively small line item, given the overall size of the CBRM budget, it is something that is near and dear to the hearts of ratepayers.
“It never ceases to amaze me when we talk about heavy garbage whether or not we will do it and I suppose I’ll take credit for taking it out at the last minute because we were trying to balance the budget,” Walsh said.
“The solid waste manager and the director of public works always emphasize the importance of the service to the community and I’m starting to understand that because of all the calls that we’ve received. I think it’s a great service, it’s just one of those things, when you’re pitching priorities, (that) just kind of didn’t make the cut.”
When the budget was passed, it made reference to the practice returning in spring 2018, and it was noted that additional pickups of contaminated items were done in the wake of the Thanksgiving Day flood.
When council’s general committee voted in favour of the motion to reinstate the collection if the CBRM was in the black, Walsh cautiously advised that the municipality was on track to have a surplus but that was barring any severe snowstorms or a major crime that could bring with them significant expenditures. Since then, there has been a snowstorm that dumped about 20 centimetres of snow on the region.
Walsh said the CBRM had been on track to have a surplus of about $500,000 prior to the most recent storm, although that needs to be updated.
“We’ll have a definitive decision by Friday,” Walsh said. “It’s hard to tell, I really have to run the numbers. Because there’s so many timing (issues), all the credit card fees always running a month behind, we have leases that may not be paid up to date, so I have to really have a hard look at the numbers.”
The municipality posted an advisory on its Facebook page Monday reminding residents that no date has been set for a heavy garbage collection.
The amount of heavy garbage collected in recent years has ranged from a high of 3,223 tonnes in 2010 to a low of 2,200 tonnes in 2013. Last year, about 2,400 tonnes of heavy garbage was collected in the spring pickup while an additional 4,700 tonnes of material was collected in the aftermath of the Thanksgiving storm.
The CBRM will seek to recover the costs associated with the material picked up in the aftermath of the flood, but it hasn’t received that reimbursement yet.