The first half of North Battleford budget deliberations wrapped up on schedule Wednesday night, with council settling many long-awaited decisions on water, sewer and waste management in the city.
Based on those deliberations, North Battleford taxpayers can look forward to biweekly blue-cart recyclables collection in 2014, along with biweekly garbage collection in black rollout carts.
They can also look forward, unfortunately, to their water rates and sewer rates going up, possibly more than originally expected.
The first piece of news from the budget meeting Wednesday came right at the start, when administration officials confirmed the increase in the water rate will now be five percent, and not four percent as originally proposed.
Driving the overall increase are some hefty costs for some important capital projects on the water side in 2014. Capital work includes the water mains on the 1000 block of 109th Street, on the 1900 block of 99th Street, 9th Avenue from 112th to 113th, and on 12th Avenue from 101st and 102nd.
The latter project depends on whether a local improvement there goes ahead or not, confirmed Dan Maloney of the public works department. That is a water main project only; the other three involves capital work on both water and sewer mains.
On the sewer side, administration stuck to their recommendation for a two percent increase in 2014. However, concern was expressed that the increase might be too low.
Councillor Greg Lightfoot questioned the rate increase and worried it might not keep up with the various expensive sewer replacement projects needed in the coming years.
"I'm just hoping we don't have to come back to the public with a 15 percent increase," Lightfoot said. He expressed support for a more proactive approach.
Councillor Ryan Bater, on the other hand, wondered if perhaps this should be the year taxpayers got a break, noting they had to absorb some major hikes across the board in 2013.
Council floated the idea of perhaps bringing in a sewer rate increase of four percent instead of two. Administration plans to bring back numbers for Monday night showing what the impact of that increase would be. A decision is likely to happen that night on whether the sewer rates go up by four percent or stay at two percent as originally proposed.
The main event of the evening was the long-awaited discussion on the pending changes to waste management collection in the city.
North Battleford intends to move away from the current weekly pickup from communal bins and go to biweekly collection for garbage and recyclables.
The first decision to be made was on city-wide recycling, as councillors worked to settle the issue of whether to go with blue bag collection, or pickup from blue carts instead.
Public works director Stewart Schafer provided a memo to councillors updating them on the situation. After the Nov. 25 council meeting, in which representatives from Ever Green Ecological Services and Loraas Environmental Services made presentations outlining the advantages of their competing options, administration asked all parties to resubmit their pricing and break out the roll-out cart costs to be compliant with the original RFP.
New pricing information was submitted, and based on that, the proposal from Allan's Disposal was considered too high and was not considered further.
The most economical proposal from Ever Green was to implement blue bag collection at an annual cost of $296,412 plus taxes.
The proposals from Loraas included options for blue cart rental or blue cart purchase. All were more expensive than the blue bag proposal, but came in underneath the Ever Green price quote for blue cart purchase.
City administration made clear purchasing blue carts would be preferable to renting them, allowing for more flexibility once the recycling contract came up in four years. As for the purchase of the blue carts, administration offered an option whether the recycling and processing contract could be offered to Loraas, while the blue carts themselves could be purchased from a third-party supplier - in this case, Superior Truck - saving some money.
Overall the option to go with Loraas for blue carts collection with the carts purchased from a third party came to a projected annual cost of $370,922 plus taxes.
Councillors considered what the impact on ratepayers would be for both the Ever Green and Loraas proposals. The Ever Green proposal would have seen recycling rates stay at $6 per month. The Loraas proposal would have meant a hike of $.50 a month to $6.50 a month. However, councillors also noted that under the Ever Green proposal consumers would be stuck having to purchase blue bags at a minimum cost of $.33 cents a bag, meaning the ultimate cost to residents would be higher. Councillor Don Buglas noted that one resident said the cost might be even higher than that based on the prices seen at local stores for blue bags.
The ultimate deciding factor in favour of the Loraas blue carts proposal was public sentiment. Both councillor Greg Lightfoot and councillor Cathy Richardson said feedback they received was overwhelmingly in favour of blue carts.
There was also little concern expressed from residents about having both blue and black carts in the same driveway.
Council reached a consensus in favour of biweekly blue cart collection. Lightfoot moved to recommend the recycling collection and processing contract be awarded to Loraas, with the city financing purchase of the blue carts from the third party supplier Superior Truck.
Next up was the decision on what to do with respect to waste pickup. This proved to be perhaps the toughest decision councillors had to make on the evening.
Councillors needed to decide whether to go with weekly garbage pickup for the rollout carts, or whether to go with biweekly pickup.
A third option, floated by councillor Lightfoot at an earlier council meeting, had been to go with weekly pickup during the summers only, but administration made clear the cost for that wouldn't have been much different from what it would have been if they went with weekly pickup all year.
Councillors expressed some concerns and trepidation about whether biweekly pickup would be enough, particularly for households of several people. There was also concern about the smell of garbage left out during the summer for two weeks at a time.
However, what worried councillors even more was the impact on ratepayers if they went with weekly cart collection. With biweekly collection, rates per month would stay at $9 with an additional $1 added to pay for the roll-out cart, for a total of $10. For weekly collection, though, there would be an additional $2.85 on top of all that to cover the cost of the additional truck that would be needed.
In the end the prospect of hitting ratepayers with that big an increase was simply unpalatable for most of council. They settled on biweekly cart collection, at least initially, noting that if that biweekly regime did not work well they could still switch back to weekly collection.
The decision was not unanimous. Councillor Don Buglas had favoured weekly collection. Others on council were clearly uneasy about whether biweekly pickup will be successful and accepted by the public. Nevertheless the majority are prepared to move ahead with biweekly cart pickup in 2014.
There was one piece of unexpected good news in the waste management side of the budget. Revenues for 2013 ended up being higher than originally budgeted by about $600,000.
What to do with that windfall is something council intends to consider further on Monday night, with various possibilities being floated. One possibility is that money could be used to finance the purchase of the black carts, saving ratepayers from having to shell out the additional $1 a month for carts on their garbage bill. However, no decisions were made Wednesday and the issue of what to do with the $600,000 was due to return to council for further discussion for the second deliberation session on Monday night.
Deliberations on Wednesday wrapped with discussion of the planning and development budget for 2014. That concluded a productive three-and-a-half hour session for Mayor Ian Hamilton and the five councillors, as well as for administration officials and those in the gallery.
The second deliberation session, on Monday night at 7 p.m., is expected to finally settle what the sewer rate increase for 2014 will be, as well as move into the operations side of the budget and discussion of the proposed hefty 5.99 per cent property tax revenue increase.
Should deliberations wrap up as expected Monday, the full budget could come back to council to be officially voted on and adopted as soon as Jan. 27.
