Port Huron setting flat $285 fee for garbage collection

There will be a new number billed to Port Huron taxpayers this summer to cover garbage pickup.

But whether it’ll mean a cost increase or decrease will vary.

Under the proposed budget for the next fiscal year, beginning July 1, the city is transitioning to a flat $285 fee, replacing a long-held millage for trash collection. The switch comes amid a spike in cost for the city’s next five-year collection agreement with Emterra Environmental USA that’s close to 45% higher than its soon-to-expire contract.

Port Huron City Manager James Freed said a big motivation for the fee — an arrangement that’ll drop a $20 recycling fee but still include the service, as well as leaf pickup — was to make the collection cost more equitable among property owners.

“For most people, it’ll be about a wash. For some people, it’ll go up. For some, it’ll go down,” he said in an interview Thursday.

Currently, a 2.7845-mill tax levies roughly $2,077,000 annually for refuse collection.

Officials said the challenge becomes covering the new Emterra contract long term, as its annual cost would rise from $2.6 million to $2.9 million without a change in payment mechanism. Under that model, according to the city, there would be a deficit of $530,481 after the first year and $885,958 in the fifth year.

Meanwhile, the $285 fee is based on a parcel count totaling over 9,900 and a $2.8 million first-year budget.

In talking about leveling the playing field, Freed pointed to a range of current and former city officials, whose personal payments have ranged from under $100 a year up into the thousands depending on the assessment and purchase date of their home.

“You want to talk about equity? Bob Mosurak’s going to pay $130 more,” he said of the city councilman.

“For folks who bought their house (decades) ago, they’re under Prop A and they’re capped. So, like if you buy a house for 50,000 in the ‘80s, and now it’s worth 150, you’re paying on the 50,000,” Freed added. “… That’s the problem. The millage, I mean back then, environmental laws have changed (since), and tip fees (at landfills) have gone up.”

More on Port Huron's refuse collection

Port Huron City Council members OK’d the next $14 million contract with Emterra in February on the heels of complaints from the previous leaf pickup season.

The five-year contract will also maintain unlimited solid waste collection and weekly yard waste pickup. But it’ll newly limit bulk pickup to one item a week.

Emterra’s current contract has cost $9.6 million total. The city first privatized refuse collection in the 1990s.

Officials have blamed the rise in collection costs around the state and country on the worker shortage, equipment costs, and other fees.

Freed said they compared costs to the arrangements in neighboring communities in setting Port Huron’s new one.

Later, during a budget workshop with council members, he wagered other communities haven’t had to renew their refuse collection contracts, and therefore, hadn’t yet encountered the impact of rising costs too severely.

And unlike Port Huron, Freed said some of its neighbors don’t include leaf pickup.

“When you’re comparing with these communities that are adjacent to us, (multiple) can burn their leaves,” said Mayor Pauline Repp. Port Huron, she said, first banned leaf burning in the 1980s.

Freed said the city can’t opt back in under state law.

Repp added there’d been complaints from residents about leaf burning because of allergies, asthma, and other conditions they experienced.

“Then, you can’t open our windows. You can’t go outside. I remember, it was a lot,” she said. If it were allowed, “we would have more fire calls most definitely.”

City Council has a public hearing set for Monday’s meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. at the Municipal Office Center, 100 McMorran Blvd., for residents to comment on the proposed document. The document itself can be viewed at www.porthuron.org/opengovernment.

More agenda items can be found at http://porthuroncitymi.iqm2.com/Citizens/calendar.aspx.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.