Editor's note: The following is part one of a two-part series covering ongoing negotiations between the Green County transfer station and its users. Part two will be printed in the Thursday, July 25 edition.
TOWN OF DECATUR - Out in the countryside, just three miles east of Brodhead, vehicle after vehicle flowed in to the solid waste transfer station on Monday, July 15.
Private county residents were paying five dollars for all the garbage bags or junk they could haul in, up to 220 pounds. Dump trucks were weighed; their company or municipality would get billed.
Inside the transfer station office, four men - Solid Waste Management Board members Harvey Mandel, Steve Stettler and Richard Vogel and transfer station manager Randy Thompson - sat at a table, watching the traffic turn into the driveway, talking about trash, worrying about people.
"I wonder what they're going to do," said one.
"People don't know what's happening," said another.
"It's our duty to tell people what's going to happen here," someone answered.
At the last board meeting, on Thursday, July 11, the four men took up the challenge of getting the word out.
"That's the county," Thompson said, as an orange truck moved by the window of the office. "They're probably out picking up trash in the ditches. I wonder what the county will do with that. Get another dumpster, I suppose."
Right now, members of the board are anxious.
By the end of the year, the county solid waste transfer station could be closed. Right now, board members believe the chances are it will be.
Mandel, a county supervisor, is concerned that, without the transfer station, the county will be finding and picking up more trash in the road ditches.
"Anyone who has ever driven from the city to drop off garbage at the landfill, that'll all go away," Thompson said, point to the traffic outside.
That's because negotiations with the station's main member user, the City of Monroe, are not moving ahead smoothly.
The 15 municipalities and the county that use the county transfer station will need to decide what to do about trash disposal next year, if Monroe doesn't sign back into the agreement. They will also have to look for replacement of other disposal services the station provides now, including services for recyclables, bulky household items, demolition and construction materials, tires, yard waste, electronics and more.
Without the city's participation, the station won't have enough business to remain operational. The fees it would have to charge just to cover fixed expenses would sky-rocket beyond feasibility for everyone else who uses it: other municipalities, businesses and rural residents.
"Budgets start in September," Mandel noted.
Back in Monroe
The City of Monroe is already starting to look at its 2014 budget. In fact, Monroe's city administrator, Phil Rath, has been looking hard at his city's transfer station costs for more than two years.
While the tipping fee at the county transfer station is $45 per ton, Rath said the actual cost, based on the city's bills, "is closer to $70-90 per ton."
That's because members of the transfer station agreement pay the station's operational expenses not covered by revenues, based proportionally on the tonnage of trash they each contribute to the total every month. Monroe's portion was 52 to 62 percent between 1999 and 2011.
"(Before) three years ago, the city was paying $85,000 to $140,000 a year for tipping fees - about $10,000 a month," Rath said Tuesday.
The city budgeted more than $222,000 for trash professional services - mostly for transfer station costs, according to Rath - out of a budget of $323,000 for trash and refuse services for 2013.
About $94,000 was for labor and employee-related costs. Rath said labor cost should decrease by half starting in mid-2013, when the city moved to an automated trash collection process.
The city's cost for the professional services was $206,000 in 2010 and $174,500 in 2011, and an estimated $208,000 in 2012.
Costs for trash and bulky waste pickups usually do not hit the general levy, but are paid by residents who use the services.
"I agree with (county clerk) Mike Doyle and Randy Thompson," Rath said. "To reduce costs (at the transfer station) the tonnage has to go up. But I don't know if there's enough garbage in the entire county to do that."
Viable alternative?
Rath and Monroe's city attorney, Rex Ewald, have presented on behalf of the city a proposal to replace the county-appointed solid waste management board with a commission of representatives from the station's membership, as well as to make other changes.
The county's attorney, Brian Bucholtz, believes the commission would overstep the county's control of the entity. Board members were most aggrieved about the "weighted-vote" option, most likely based on the municipalities' populations, which they believe would give Monroe an advantage in managing the transfer station.
Board members are also worried that, if the station does close, uninformed residents and business owners that use the transfer station to dispose of anything will be caught in a predicament over hiring a private disposal company that can find another transfer station or landfill to take their trash.
That option, Mandel, Stettler, Vogel and Thompson agreed, will certainly cost everyone more.
- See part two in tomorrow's Monroe Times, covering the costs of waste disposal and alternative options some communities already use.
TOWN OF DECATUR - Out in the countryside, just three miles east of Brodhead, vehicle after vehicle flowed in to the solid waste transfer station on Monday, July 15.
Private county residents were paying five dollars for all the garbage bags or junk they could haul in, up to 220 pounds. Dump trucks were weighed; their company or municipality would get billed.
Inside the transfer station office, four men - Solid Waste Management Board members Harvey Mandel, Steve Stettler and Richard Vogel and transfer station manager Randy Thompson - sat at a table, watching the traffic turn into the driveway, talking about trash, worrying about people.
"I wonder what they're going to do," said one.
"People don't know what's happening," said another.
"It's our duty to tell people what's going to happen here," someone answered.
At the last board meeting, on Thursday, July 11, the four men took up the challenge of getting the word out.
"That's the county," Thompson said, as an orange truck moved by the window of the office. "They're probably out picking up trash in the ditches. I wonder what the county will do with that. Get another dumpster, I suppose."
Right now, members of the board are anxious.
By the end of the year, the county solid waste transfer station could be closed. Right now, board members believe the chances are it will be.
Mandel, a county supervisor, is concerned that, without the transfer station, the county will be finding and picking up more trash in the road ditches.
"Anyone who has ever driven from the city to drop off garbage at the landfill, that'll all go away," Thompson said, point to the traffic outside.
That's because negotiations with the station's main member user, the City of Monroe, are not moving ahead smoothly.
The 15 municipalities and the county that use the county transfer station will need to decide what to do about trash disposal next year, if Monroe doesn't sign back into the agreement. They will also have to look for replacement of other disposal services the station provides now, including services for recyclables, bulky household items, demolition and construction materials, tires, yard waste, electronics and more.
Without the city's participation, the station won't have enough business to remain operational. The fees it would have to charge just to cover fixed expenses would sky-rocket beyond feasibility for everyone else who uses it: other municipalities, businesses and rural residents.
"Budgets start in September," Mandel noted.
Back in Monroe
The City of Monroe is already starting to look at its 2014 budget. In fact, Monroe's city administrator, Phil Rath, has been looking hard at his city's transfer station costs for more than two years.
While the tipping fee at the county transfer station is $45 per ton, Rath said the actual cost, based on the city's bills, "is closer to $70-90 per ton."
That's because members of the transfer station agreement pay the station's operational expenses not covered by revenues, based proportionally on the tonnage of trash they each contribute to the total every month. Monroe's portion was 52 to 62 percent between 1999 and 2011.
"(Before) three years ago, the city was paying $85,000 to $140,000 a year for tipping fees - about $10,000 a month," Rath said Tuesday.
The city budgeted more than $222,000 for trash professional services - mostly for transfer station costs, according to Rath - out of a budget of $323,000 for trash and refuse services for 2013.
About $94,000 was for labor and employee-related costs. Rath said labor cost should decrease by half starting in mid-2013, when the city moved to an automated trash collection process.
The city's cost for the professional services was $206,000 in 2010 and $174,500 in 2011, and an estimated $208,000 in 2012.
Costs for trash and bulky waste pickups usually do not hit the general levy, but are paid by residents who use the services.
"I agree with (county clerk) Mike Doyle and Randy Thompson," Rath said. "To reduce costs (at the transfer station) the tonnage has to go up. But I don't know if there's enough garbage in the entire county to do that."
Viable alternative?
Rath and Monroe's city attorney, Rex Ewald, have presented on behalf of the city a proposal to replace the county-appointed solid waste management board with a commission of representatives from the station's membership, as well as to make other changes.
The county's attorney, Brian Bucholtz, believes the commission would overstep the county's control of the entity. Board members were most aggrieved about the "weighted-vote" option, most likely based on the municipalities' populations, which they believe would give Monroe an advantage in managing the transfer station.
Board members are also worried that, if the station does close, uninformed residents and business owners that use the transfer station to dispose of anything will be caught in a predicament over hiring a private disposal company that can find another transfer station or landfill to take their trash.
That option, Mandel, Stettler, Vogel and Thompson agreed, will certainly cost everyone more.
- See part two in tomorrow's Monroe Times, covering the costs of waste disposal and alternative options some communities already use.