Richard Rolke - Vernon Morning Star Published: July 10, 2010 12:00 PM
A local municipality believes it is being unfairly dumped on over a new landfill fee. Armstrong officials are asking that the North Okanagan Regional District defer a $5 per tonne closure reserve surcharge until 2011 because of the negative impact it’s having on the city’s finances. “It’s made it tough to deal with it,” said Armstrong director John Trainor, adding that the city’s 2010 budget was determined before it received notice from the regional district on the new levy. “We’re not going to go back to our taxpayers and say there’s a late item we have to pay for.” The city pays a contractor directly for waste collection and it’s expected the contractor will now be billing more because of the $5 per tonne surcharge. “Council was concerned around the lateness of advising municipalities of the solid waste management rate increases,” said Patti Ferguson, Armstrong’s chief administrative officer, in a letter to NORD. “The City of Armstrong bills residents for their services at the same time the property tax notices are mailed out. The notices have been sent for 2010 and council has elected to not collect the increased fees from residents until 2011.”
NORD staff say that details about the surcharge were sent out to member jurisdictions in early May, and there is no way that collection of the fee can be stopped now. “We started charging this as of July 1,” said Arnold Badke, general manager of engineering. Will Hansma, Spallumcheen director, doesn’t believe any municipality should have been surprised by the regional district’s process. “We first dealt with this back in February and there was ample opportunity for people to prepare their budgets,” he said. The goal of the surcharge is to build up enough funds to cover the future costs of closing down local landfills.
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