Changes could be coming in Coquitlam that would see owners of condos and townhouses pay more and single-family homeowners pay less for recycling depot services offered by the municipality.
Currently, only owners of houses bear the cost of the facilities through their solid-waste fees, included in their annual property tax bill.
“However, the recycling depots are a community-wide benefit used by all residents in the city regardless of whether they pay into the solid waste utility,” said a staff report to city council.
For 2017, the cost of operating the recycling depots in Coquitlam is expected to be approximately $530,000, although the total will likely decrease to $350,000 in 2018 and 2019 following the city’s decision to close the Mariner Way facility and concentrate its recycling service at Town Centre Park, said the staff report.
Currently, single-family homeowners pay an average of $21 per year for the operation of the recycling depots. With the expected decrease in the overall expenditure and with multi-family homes sharing in the cost, the average fee would be between $7 and $9 per dwelling over the next few years, according to preliminary estimates put forward by the city’s engineering department.
“This would be a significant reduction in recycling fees for [single-family] homeowners but would represent a new fee altogether for [multi-family] homeowners,” said the staff report.
Starting this month and continuing until March 2018, the engineering department will collect data at the Town Centre facility to determine what residents are using the depot service.
Based on the analysis, staff will assess whether a new fee should be implemented and will bring back a report to council as part of the 2018 budget deliberations.
Jozsef Dioszeghy, the city’s general manager of engineering and public works, said the city would base any new fees on the data collected over the next few months. He told council that if the cost of implementing the proposal is more than the income generated, staff would not recommend making the change.
Recycling depot fees are not the only example of the city rebalancing its utility rates between single- and multi-family homes. The city is currently in the process of changing water rates so that single-family homeowners will pay more than multi-family homeowners.
@gmckennaTC
