Waste collector nearing end of rate-hike round
Mill Valley Refuse Service has nearly completed a series of rate increases tomake up a $1.3 million budget shortfall.
The service intended to request a rate increase in but postponed it until September because of the coronavirus pandemic, said Jim Iavarone, the managing director.
“We are still in the middle of this thing, however, it’s better than it was in back in April,” Iavarone said. “Businesses are now starting to reopen. The delay was successful in reducing the rate request by a percentage point from this time in April, but it’s still not as much as a recovery as we would hope.”
So far, Mill Valley has approved a 10.20% increase, Tiburon a 9.37% increase and Corte Madera a 10.47% increase over a nine-month period. After the first three payments, rates will be reduced to 7.65%, 7.02% and 7.85%, respectively.
Belvedere is the next city set to review a rate increase, in October, Iavarone said. The Strawberry, Alto and Homestead areas have also approved the request, leaving only a few unincorporated areas in the southern county, he said.
He said the deficit is not just due to the “shelter inplace” order and the loss of commercial revenue, but also because of rising insurance costs, the purchase of new trucks and a 4.5% wage increase for drivers.
“That’s the amount that we need to recover when you put together all our projected expenses for the coming year,” he said. “That $1.3 million is spread across all our jurisdictions.”
While Mill Valley and Corte Madera went smoothly, some Tiburon Town Council members and residents were reluctant to accept the rate increase. The council cast a 3-2 vote to approve the rate increase at its Sept. 16 meeting.
One of the dissenting votes was by Councilman Jon Welner, who said the town received many letters doubting the basis of the rate increase. Some even asked the council to consider an audit.
Vice Mayor Holli Thier, who also voted no, said, “In my mind, all public contracts should be bid out.”
Mayor Alice Fredericks reluctantly supported the rate increase. She said the town should hold off on an audit until the scheduled one next year because the cost of conducting an audit is baked into the rates customers already pay, so the cost of another unscheduled audit would be added to the rate increase.
“Although this is a steep increase, I really think the accounting information that we
were presented with supports it as a necessary increase to keep our services at the levels they are now,” she said.
Town Manager Greg Chanis said the town would bear the entire cost of the audit instead of spreading it among the jurisdictions.
“Whereas the every third year audit is done sort of cooperatively,” he said.
Tiburon resident Catherine Chow said Mill Valley Refuse has already raised rates enough. She said she pays about $54 amonth for garbage service and that the city should reconsider its contract.
Resident Lorrie Bruderer said she is surprised and upset that the rate increase comes only two years after a nearly 14% increase.
“This large of an increase in this point in time is far exceeding inflation and unreasonable,” Bruderer said. “We live on a fixed income and that increase will be a hardship on the already increasing costs of utilities.”
Iavarone at tributed the 13.71% rate increase in 2018 to a shift to dual service, which requires residents to sort their recyclables to reduce processing costs.
Chanis said that was largely due to China’s “National Sword Initiative,” which accounted for approximately 60% of the requested rate increase.
Iavarone said the initiative limited the import of contaminated recyclables and increased the fees from $0 per ton to $72 per ton.
“We don’t own a recycling plant or processing plant, we’re just haulers,” he said. “So we didn’t restrict anything. The Chinese restricted what they wanted from the processing plants and then the processing plants told us, stop picking up certain things, mainly different kinds of plastics.”
There were also requests to go back to a blended rate option, but Fredericks said people who live on the hill would pay less compared to those who live in the flat areas.
Councilmen David Kulik and Jack Ryan said it would be better to wait for the audit next year to decide if the town would put the refuse contract out to bid or switch to a blended rate system.
Kulik asked whether any discrepancies found in the audit would mean compensation for the customers. While Town Attorney Ben Stock said he is not sure if there is a clause that allows for retroactive compensation if there is a miscalculation, Iavarone said he is confident the numbers are accurate.