District of Sparwood council Dec. 5 passed the first three readings of a Utility & Solid Waste Management Bylaw Amendment (Amendment Bylaw 1198, 2016) that if passed will increase district water, sewer and garbage collection rates.

The amendment includes the following: A special use rate for businesses or institutions that choose to use bear resistant commercial garbage containers and arrange for third party collection; the Pilot Bear Resistant Container Program has been expanded to include up to 20 businesses for a two-year period; addition of a new classification for Day Care businesses; and connection fees for services in specified areas.

In a report to council by Barbara Nunes, district Deputy Director of Finance noted the overall increase in rates between 2016 and 2017 will be 3.6% and the proposed overall increases for the following years are 1.8% each year. It means the combined cost for water, sewer and garbage rates for a single-family residence in Sparwood will climb from $878.52 a year in 2016 to $960.84 by 2020.

“Currently the rates cover only the years 2016 and 2017. By establishing rates for future years, we provide users and ourselves with more certainty for budgeting. We have reviewed our existing costs, estimates and surplus balances and are proposing that, effective 2018, water rates increase by three per cent, sewer rates by two per cent and garbage rates by one per cent,” Nunes stated in her report.

The previous Amendment Bylaw No. 1190 was adopted October 3, and contained provisions aimed to address the issues of animal attraction to waste, she explained.

“One component was to eliminate the use of standalone plastic garbage bags. Another component was the introduction of a pilot bear resistant container program. With elimination of plastic bags, the provision for tags for extra bags was also eliminated. In order that residents who have extra garbage but are not easily able to bring this to the transfer station themselves, we have provided an option of purchasing a tag and placing this at the top of the garbage in an extra container. Tag purchase has been quite low historically, however, by providing this simple option, we continue to provide the level of service we have offered in the past with low administration cost,” Nunes related in her report.

“The pilot bear resistant container program was limited to five businesses due to concerns about the amount revenue lost. However, now that we have determined a fair method of calculating rates for pilot program entities, there is room to increase the pilot so that we can offer the program to a greater number of users who have bear issues. Also, when we reviewed our five most likely bear attraction sites, they included seven businesses. Shortly after that we also became aware of a problem at the CPR bunkhouse. We are also aware that there was a problem at one of the schools this year. By increasing the pilot to 20, we have room to cover any other sites that may become a problem during the term of the program,” she explained to council.

“Increasing the term of the program to two years is proposed to allow for time to do an in-depth review of the district’s waste management options, make a final decision and allow for wait time on obtaining new equipment.

“Council was concerned about pilot program participants being overcharged – once through the district and once by the private contractor. The new rate is designed so that even though the pilot program user may pay two bills, they are for different services. The new rate removes the direct cost of providing the collection service from the total user rates for pilot program users. The new use rate added to the base rate in the bylaw recovers the costs of recycling through the RDEK (Regional District of East Kootenay), our own diversion activities, and our share of RDEK costs to operate the transfer station and transport the waste to its final location. It should be noted that domestic waste is free at the transfer station, so that the private contractor should only be billing the pilot program participants for the collection and the containers, which is exactly the component we have removed to come to the proposed rates for the pilot program,” Nunes reported.

The bylaw will come forward for consideration of adoption at the December 19 council meeting.

A copy of the staff report and bylaw are available.

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