Orange County Governments Talk Recycling Funding

County and town elected officials met Thursday night to work out how to fund recycling and solid waste services.

Legislative boards from the towns of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough met with the Orange County Board of Commissioners.

The Solid Waste Advisory Group (SWAG), made up of elected officials from each local government, has come up with two funding options.

Option 1: A two-part fee with $94 a year for urban property and $118 per year for rural property.
Option 2: A flat fee of $103 per year for all Orange County property. (The exact dollar amounts could change since projections are based on the fiscal year 2014/15 budget.)

Board members from the county and towns said they would prefer a flat fee, but not members of the Chapel Hill Town Council.

“Right now I am unwilling to ask people I represent to pay more to achieve a one-fee system,” said Chapel Hill Town Council member Jim Ward. “Chapel Hill taxpayers are paying for more than they are getting in services.”

Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt pointed to a UNC survey that found town residents make up only 11 percent of those who use the county’s solid waste convenience centers. He said the two-part fee would be more equitable than the flat fee.

Others said the flat fee would be a way to bring together all Orange County residents and spread out the costs.

“You all know I teach,” said Carrboro Alderwoman Randee Haven-O’Donnell. “My students, after their lunch they’ve got paper; they’ve got bottles sitting on their tables. And if the mindset was, ‘I’m only going to take care of my own recycling, and we didn’t help with the other recycling’ . . . where would we be?”

O’Donnell drew a comparison between students helping out with the whole group’s recycling and a flat fee for the whole county.

County Commissioner Barry Jacobs, the chair of SWAG, also favors the flat fee.

“I think we spend way too much time trying to figure out who’s getting over on whom instead of saying we’re all in this together,” said Jacobs. “We have a bigger opponent in Raleigh that’s going to bring things down on us that’s not going to be good for any of our governments . . . We’re going to have various challenges that we can only even begin to address if we feel like we’re partners.”

The governments pondered the possibility of piloting a funding option for one to three years. Officials could gather data on how well it’s working and then reassess.

The four governments could agree on a funding plan for recycling and waste services by the end of April.

Orange County Governments Talk Recycling Funding

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