If your town, village or city is a member of the Green County Transfer Station:
Ask yourself: Whose trash disposal am I paying for? (Or: Who is paying for my trash disposal?)
Because of the current billing practice, some of us may pay for a portion of the trash disposal of: 1) many businesses in Green County - not just the ones in our own community and 2) residents from other communities.
This situation is caused mostly by charges based on proportional usages, frozen after the "Great Green County Trash Mass Exodus" in late 2011. These proportions have not been updated in more than three years.
Furthermore, the billing formula itself creates a different annual rate per ton for every municipality and is not directly proportional to the amount to trash contributed in that year.
This disproportional annual rate is created purely by chance, by three uncontrollably fluctuating variables in the formula every month.
So, the billing structure has always created inequitable annual rates and is now also outdated.
Ask yourself: Is my municipality using my trash fees or our municipal tax revenues to pay for other people's trash disposal?
The Solid Waste Management Board and management use no county tax revenue money to support the station.
Each municipality should determine whether municipal property tax revenue collected is equitable to the disposal charges incurred by that property. The same consideration goes for sanitation fees.
In Monticello, our trash collection program operates only on fees from all residential and all but four commercial properties. But one of the four disposes enough trash to equal or exceed the entire rest of the village collection each month.
The village has no equitable way yet to charge large companies or their trash contractors for the added expense to cover their tonnage dropped at the transfer station. We are waiting to see if the SWM board is going to adjust its fees and rates. Until then, trash fees from all our residents and smaller businesses (whose trash the municipality collects) are covering it.
We can afford to be patient. Thanks to the current billing practice, Monticello is being subsidized, as is about half the membership and probably every trash contractor working within all our borders. I'd especially like to salute the City of Monroe, for paying about 54 percent of the transfer station expenses since January 2012 - when in reality, it was contributing only about 47 percent of the trash.
But goodwill often runs dry.
The City of Monroe became non-members in 2015, preferring to pay the $52 per ton, non-member rate for its municipally collected, residential trash and, letting its businesses pay their own non-member tipping costs, rather than subsidizing them and some of us members.
The Town of Monroe also rescinded its membership this year. It uses a contractor hauler and pays no extra monthly charges. But some of our members may still be subsidizing Monroe businesses and the Town of Monroe because some private haulers have negotiated for lower-than-non-member rates at the station - sweet deals to keep them coming back to the station, to keep volume and revenues up.
The cash cow billing structure fills in the monthly gap; excess expense gets billed to members - based on their 2011 percentages.
Ask yourself: Who am I willing to subsidize? (Or: Am I willing to let my neighbors subsidize me?) And how long am I willing to subsidize them?
In early 2012, after the transfer station lost 68 percent of its total trash volume, management recalculated the usage proportions. Brodhead, Monticello, Albany, New Glarus, Albany Town, Clarno Town and the county government offices would have seen increases in their percentages.
Instead, the SWM board temporarily froze the 2011 annual percentages, and we've been there ever since.
The real percentages actually fluctuate each month, and if they were to be used, along with the unknown, monthly excess costs, the billing structure becomes once again a game of roulette as to the real rates paid annually by each member.
Now ask yourself: How strongly do we want to keep our county trash collection facility and all its other services available and open?
The SWM Board is reluctant to raise tipping fees to cover operational costs, though it would spread costs more equitably and eliminate subsidizing.
The board worries the "market" wouldn't bear a higher rate and that higher rates might scare off private haulers, plunge volume again and lead to a forced shutdown or reduced hours of operation. But the board also admits it doesn't know what the market will bear.
Many board members have expressed resistance to changes in the billing structure, as proposed by Monticello and Monroe in May.
The Monticello Village Board proposal seeks to eliminate end-of-month, surprise bills from the proportional use formula. Instead, it suggests a single tipping rate to be paid by everyone: Municipal, commercial and private haulers; member or non-member.
Monroe proposed a gradual increase in tipping fees over the next two years, which Monticello could agree with. A sudden, full increase could hurt profit margins of private haulers under contracted with their customers. Not knowing what the market will bear, the SWM board should appreciate this steady-as-we-go approach.
Monticello's proposal suggests non-members pay a small, additional gate fee for each entrance to the station.
It also includes a municipal "membership fee" to provide a stream of revenue to cover all the other services the transfer station provides. This fee is not dependent upon trash volumes; it would be based on the number of property parcels in each member municipality. It allows members' citizens and property owners access to lower-than-public prices at the station all year, with no gate fees. Being a member becomes a privilege, rather than a punishment.
Monroe was ready to agree to a five-year contract under very similar conditions, and five-year membership contracts are something the SWM board wants badly.
The transfer station and its membership need Monroe and private haulers if we want our transfer station to stay open and not reduce hours.
But we have to overhaul the disproportional billing structure before we have to pay more to our haul trash out of the county.
- Tere Dunlap is a trustee on the Monticello Village Board
Ask yourself: Whose trash disposal am I paying for? (Or: Who is paying for my trash disposal?)
Because of the current billing practice, some of us may pay for a portion of the trash disposal of: 1) many businesses in Green County - not just the ones in our own community and 2) residents from other communities.
This situation is caused mostly by charges based on proportional usages, frozen after the "Great Green County Trash Mass Exodus" in late 2011. These proportions have not been updated in more than three years.
Furthermore, the billing formula itself creates a different annual rate per ton for every municipality and is not directly proportional to the amount to trash contributed in that year.
This disproportional annual rate is created purely by chance, by three uncontrollably fluctuating variables in the formula every month.
So, the billing structure has always created inequitable annual rates and is now also outdated.
Ask yourself: Is my municipality using my trash fees or our municipal tax revenues to pay for other people's trash disposal?
The Solid Waste Management Board and management use no county tax revenue money to support the station.
Each municipality should determine whether municipal property tax revenue collected is equitable to the disposal charges incurred by that property. The same consideration goes for sanitation fees.
In Monticello, our trash collection program operates only on fees from all residential and all but four commercial properties. But one of the four disposes enough trash to equal or exceed the entire rest of the village collection each month.
The village has no equitable way yet to charge large companies or their trash contractors for the added expense to cover their tonnage dropped at the transfer station. We are waiting to see if the SWM board is going to adjust its fees and rates. Until then, trash fees from all our residents and smaller businesses (whose trash the municipality collects) are covering it.
We can afford to be patient. Thanks to the current billing practice, Monticello is being subsidized, as is about half the membership and probably every trash contractor working within all our borders. I'd especially like to salute the City of Monroe, for paying about 54 percent of the transfer station expenses since January 2012 - when in reality, it was contributing only about 47 percent of the trash.
But goodwill often runs dry.
The City of Monroe became non-members in 2015, preferring to pay the $52 per ton, non-member rate for its municipally collected, residential trash and, letting its businesses pay their own non-member tipping costs, rather than subsidizing them and some of us members.
The Town of Monroe also rescinded its membership this year. It uses a contractor hauler and pays no extra monthly charges. But some of our members may still be subsidizing Monroe businesses and the Town of Monroe because some private haulers have negotiated for lower-than-non-member rates at the station - sweet deals to keep them coming back to the station, to keep volume and revenues up.
The cash cow billing structure fills in the monthly gap; excess expense gets billed to members - based on their 2011 percentages.
Ask yourself: Who am I willing to subsidize? (Or: Am I willing to let my neighbors subsidize me?) And how long am I willing to subsidize them?
In early 2012, after the transfer station lost 68 percent of its total trash volume, management recalculated the usage proportions. Brodhead, Monticello, Albany, New Glarus, Albany Town, Clarno Town and the county government offices would have seen increases in their percentages.
Instead, the SWM board temporarily froze the 2011 annual percentages, and we've been there ever since.
The real percentages actually fluctuate each month, and if they were to be used, along with the unknown, monthly excess costs, the billing structure becomes once again a game of roulette as to the real rates paid annually by each member.
Now ask yourself: How strongly do we want to keep our county trash collection facility and all its other services available and open?
The SWM Board is reluctant to raise tipping fees to cover operational costs, though it would spread costs more equitably and eliminate subsidizing.
The board worries the "market" wouldn't bear a higher rate and that higher rates might scare off private haulers, plunge volume again and lead to a forced shutdown or reduced hours of operation. But the board also admits it doesn't know what the market will bear.
Many board members have expressed resistance to changes in the billing structure, as proposed by Monticello and Monroe in May.
The Monticello Village Board proposal seeks to eliminate end-of-month, surprise bills from the proportional use formula. Instead, it suggests a single tipping rate to be paid by everyone: Municipal, commercial and private haulers; member or non-member.
Monroe proposed a gradual increase in tipping fees over the next two years, which Monticello could agree with. A sudden, full increase could hurt profit margins of private haulers under contracted with their customers. Not knowing what the market will bear, the SWM board should appreciate this steady-as-we-go approach.
Monticello's proposal suggests non-members pay a small, additional gate fee for each entrance to the station.
It also includes a municipal "membership fee" to provide a stream of revenue to cover all the other services the transfer station provides. This fee is not dependent upon trash volumes; it would be based on the number of property parcels in each member municipality. It allows members' citizens and property owners access to lower-than-public prices at the station all year, with no gate fees. Being a member becomes a privilege, rather than a punishment.
Monroe was ready to agree to a five-year contract under very similar conditions, and five-year membership contracts are something the SWM board wants badly.
The transfer station and its membership need Monroe and private haulers if we want our transfer station to stay open and not reduce hours.
But we have to overhaul the disproportional billing structure before we have to pay more to our haul trash out of the county.
- Tere Dunlap is a trustee on the Monticello Village Board
