Sanitation Committee suggests $6 sofa charge

    The Washington Sanitation Committee has proposed charging residents for the sofas they dispose of. The committee of city councilors Merlin Hagie, Mike Roth and Russ Zieglowsky met Wednesday afternoon prior to the council?s special session. The committee also agreed that the first day of spring cleanup this year will be Monday, April 11. The city council will consider the committee?s suggestion at its meeting Wednesday. 

    The committee suggested requiring residents to purchase a $6 tag to put on their sofas, recliners, mattresses, box springs, and chests of drawers. Robert Luke, who runs Luke Waste Management, is responsible for handling the city?s recycling and solid waste. He told the committee that the sofa-tags need not be limited to the spring cleanup. He was agreeable to picking up the sofas and other named furniture on a weekly basis.

    Mayor Sandra Johnson attended the committee meeting. She asked Luke if he has to make a second round to pick up the sofas, given their size. He said he does not, and that he just piles them on top of everything else.

    ?Is there a way we can make your job easier and the homeowners more responsible?? Johnson asked Luke.

    Luke said the homeowners could put out their couches on the day of their normal trash pickup.

    Building and Zoning Official Steve Donnelly said a weekly couch pickup would cut down the number of nuisance violations he responds to.

    ?I think a weekly pickup would help out a lot,? he said.

    A tag for an appliance costs $15. Luke said a sofa-tag wouldn?t need to cost as much because sofas do not contain the same hazardous materials as appliances.

    Hagie remarked, ?Well, it may depend on the room that sofa came out of.?

    Roth and Hagie said they worried about the sofa-tags getting stolen. Hagie asked the other committee members how they could prevent sticker-theft. City Administrator David Plyman was in the audience and remarked that the appliance stickers have the person?s address printed on them, so a stolen sticker has no value.

    Hagie said one problem with putting stickers on sofas is that the stickers would fall off.

    ?Nothing sticks to sofas except stains,? said Hagie.

    The committee talked about including more items in the ?to tag? list such as entertainment centers. Zieglowsky said the committee needed to do more than simply list a bunch of items to be tagged. He said the city could list ?500 things from chairs to tables to boards,? and yet some people would still bicker about the definition of ?recliner,? for instance.

    ?I think you need to set some dimensions, such as anything over 3 feet by 4 feet gets a tag,? he said. ?If we don?t have a dimension in there, people will find something new to throw out.?

    Councilor Bob Shepherd, who is not a committee member but was in attendance, suggested that anything that requires two people to lift should be tagged.

    ?Most chairs can be lifted by one person, but a La-Z-Boy takes two,? said Shepherd.

    Hagie said it depends who?s doing the lifting.

For more, see our March 11 print edition.