Fairfield trash, recycling fees going up

The Fairfield City Council moved to stop the city?s growing garbage fund deficit Monday evening by increasing user rates for curbside trash and recycling collection.

Effective March 1, the cost of trash collection is set to increase 56 cents, or 7.8 percent, to $7.75 per month per household; recycling collection is set to increase $1.30, or 52 percent, to $3.80 per month per household.

Additionally, commercial, institutional and industrial businesses will be assessed a recycling fee for the first time ? $3 per month.

?[Garbage and recycling] rates have changed over the last year, and our rates to the end user, to our customers, have remained the same,? said city administrator Jeff Clawson. ?As of the end of December, the balance of the garbage fund was a negative $130,000 give or take. I think the most concerning piece of that was that three months before that, the balance was a negative $100,000.

?Since single-stream recycling has been implemented, of course the cost to the city on the wholesale side went up from roughly $2.40 to $3.65, but yet our rate?s still the same at $2.50,? he continued. ?The proposal is to bring those rates up to cover the cost of those operations, so we?re not subsidizing those from our other funds.?

The current cost to the city for trash collection is $7.73 per month per household.

For the complete article, see the Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011, printed edition of The Fairfield Ledger.